New Child Support Guideline Adopted
| Publication year | 1986 |
| Pages | 1662 |
| Citation | Vol. 15 No. 9 Pg. 1662 |
1986, September, Pg. 1662. New Child Support Guideline Adopted
House Bill 1275 containing the new Colorado Child Support Guideline was signed into law on May 19, 1986. The effective date for the Child Support Guideline and the new Standard for Modification of Child Support is November 1, 1986. However, the Guideline appears to be gaining acceptance for immediate use by more and more judges and referees as they learn about it.
The Colorado Child Support Commission has responded to this immediate need by developing comments and forms to clarify the use of the Guideline. The comments are intended to accompany the Guideline as an aid and reference for those who use it.
The forms are offered for general and uniform use to develop a standardized form and procedure for their application. These forms have been supplied to the Judicial Administrator's Office by the Commission for consideration and acceptance.
As practitioners apply the Guideline and use the forms, written comments and suggestions would be welcomed by the Commission. Please forward them to Ray L. Weaver, 1709 W. Littleton Blvd., Littleton, CO 80120.
H.B. 1275, recently enacted into law, established a Child Support Guideline for Colorado.(fn2) The Guideline enacted by the Legislature was developed by the Colorado Child Support Commission. As specified in the statute, the Guideline has three objectives:
(1) To establish as state policy an adequate standard of support for children, subject to the ability of parents to pay;
(2) To make awards more equitable by ensuring more consistent treatment of persons in similar circumstances; and
(3) To improve the efficiency of the court process by promoting settlements and giving courts and the parties guidance in setting the levels of awards.
[To be codified as CRS § 14-10-115(3)(b).1
The Guideline amends Colorado Revised Statutes, § 14-10-115, and is consistent with other provisions of that section which place a duty for child support upon either or both parents based on their respective financial resources, the financial resources of the child, the needs of the custodial parent, the physical and emotional condition of the child, and the standard of living the child would have enjoyed had the marriage not been dissolved.
The Colorado Child Support Guideline is based on the Income Shares Model, developed by the Child Support Guidelines Project of the National Center for State Courts, under a grant from the U. S. Office of Child Support Enforcement. The Income Shares Model is predicated on the concept that the child should receive the same proportion of parental income that he or she would have received if the parents lived together.
The Income Shares Model provides an objective basis for determining the average costs of children in households across a wide range of incomes. Because household spending on behalf of children is intertwined with spending on behalf of adults for most expenditure categories, it is difficult to determine the proportion allocated to children in individual cases, even with exhaustive financial affidavits. However, a number of authoritative economic studies provide estimates of the average amount of household expenditures on children in intact households. These studies have found that the proportion of household spending devoted to children is systematically related to the level of household income and to the number and ages of children.
Based on this economic evidence, the Colorado Child Support Guideline calculates child support as the share of each parent's income estimated to have been spent on the child if the parents and child were living in an intact household.(fn3) If one parent has custody, the amount calculated for that parent is presumed to be spent directly on the child. For the non-custodial parent, the calculated...
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