Be Cognizant Any Costs Associated with Visitation
Video Transcribed: Transportation costs for visitation and Oklahoma child support. I’m Oklahoma Lawyer James Wirth, and that’s a topic before us. We’re doing a series related to Oklahoma child support guidelines, and just child support in Oklahoma.
And this question deals with how these two things affect each other. The transportation costs associated with visitation, and the child support obligation. And it is statutory, it’s in the law. And this is another one that we don’t see utilized nearly as often as it could be.
So if you’re in a case and this is favorable to you, you definitely want to push for it, because it’s in the statute, it’s in the guidelines that the courts are supposed to be following. So let’s see what that says. As I said, it is statutory. You can find it in the law books.
It is title 43, section 118D, subsection G. And what it says is that transportation expenses of a child between the homes of the parents may be divided between the parents in proportion to their adjusted gross income, so long as the payment of such expenses does not significantly reduce the ability of the custodial parents to provide for the basic needs of the child.
Okay, so essentially that provides the costs associated with transportation, whether that’s a plane trip across the country or whether that’s gas for traveling across the city that can be allocated pro-rata as part of the child support computation.
So if you’re in a circumstance where you’re having to do all the transportation based on the child support order, and you’re not getting compensation for that, that’s something where you could benefit from a change in your child support order.
If there’re other grounds to get it modified, you want to make sure that may be included next time. So be cognizant of what costs are associated with visitation, who is bearing the brunt end of those costs, and whether it makes sense to have those adjusted the next time you’re in court adjusting child support.
So if you’ve got any questions about transportation expenses in child support in Oklahoma, you’re going to want to talk to an attorney about that privately, confidentially, so you can get legal advice specific to your circumstances. To get that scheduled with somebody at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.
