Tennessee Family Law Questions & Answers: What Effect do Social Security Benefits have on Child Support Calculations?

Tennessee Family Law Questions & Answers

2016
July

Now displaying: Page 1

Click Here to Submit a Question

What Effect do Social Security Benefits have on Child Support Calculations? 0

Jul 6, 2016

In yesterday’s episode, we discussed several factors that go into determining the amount of child support that will be paid:

Relative Income
Parenting time
Work related child care expenses
Health insurance
Other children

In today's episode, we discuss what happens when one or both parents are receiving Social Security Benefits.

There are generally three types of social security benefits that we deal with in child support cases, disability benefits and retirement benefits both of which fall under Title II of the Social Security Act, and Supplemental Security Income benefits received under Title 16 of the Social Security Act.
For child support purposes, both disability and retirement under Title II are handled the same.
However, Title 16 Supplemental Security Income benefits are handled differently

Amounts received by a parent under Title II of the Social Security Act are considered income and can form the basis of a child support award. Supplemental Security Income benefits, however, are not included in income and cannot form the basis of a child support award.

If a parent is receiving disability or retirement benefits under Title II of the Social Security Act, then the amount received is included in income to determine the child support obligation. In addition, if the children are receiving money because of a parent’s disability income, that amount is added to the income of that parent. The amounts received by the children are called derivative benefits.

Once the children’s derivative benefits are added to the parent’s disability income, the amount of child support is calculated based on the guidelines. If the calculation shows the parent receiving disability income should be paying child support, the amount of the children’s derivative benefits are subtracted from that parent’s child support obligation. If the difference is a positive number, the parent owes the difference. If the difference is negative, child support will be zero and the parent owes nothing.