Vol. 6, No. 3, Pg. 40. Synopsis of the Revised South Carolina Child Support Guidelines.

• Author: By Christine M. Brogdon

South Carolina Lawyer

1994.

Vol. 6, No. 3, Pg. 40.

Synopsis of the Revised South Carolina Child Support Guidelines

40Synopsis of the Revised South Carolina Child Support GuidelinesBy Christine M. BrogdonBefore the establishment of guidelines, child support awards were set on a caseby-case basis with no uniform rationale. Understanding that a child's well-being is dependent on adequate support from both parents, the federal government took the lead in the development of child support guidelines. Such guidelines are intended to ensure that child support awards are both adequate and consistent in similar circumstances.

The Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984 (Pub. L. No. 98-378) required that states establish quantitative standards for determining child support awards. These guidelines were merely advisory until the Family Support Act of 1988 (Pub. L. No. 100-485) mandated that states establish presumptive guidelines, meaning that, in a judicial action, the amount of support due under the guidelines is rebuttably presumed to be the correct amount of child support to be paid. In addition, the Family Support Act of 1988 required states to review their child support guidelines at least every four years to ensure hat their application results in appropriate child support awards.

Adopted by 32 states, including South Carolina, the income shares model assumes that children should receive "the same proportion of parental income that they would have received had the parents lived together."

Although the federal government mandated the adoption and review of presumptive guidelines, it imposed no restrictions on the type of child support guidelines implemented by the states. Over the years, most states have adopted one of three child support guideline models:

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percentage of obligor income,

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Delaware-Melson formula,

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and income shares.

For an imformative study of these models, see Robert G. Williams, "An Overview of Child Support Guidelines in the United States" in Child Support Guidelines: The Next Generation, (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1994). The following is a brief synopsis of his findings.

The percentage-of-obligor-income model is the simplest of the guidelines in terms of ease of calculation. Utilized by 13 states, including Georgia, this model determines the child support based on a percentage of the obligor's gross or net income. However, this model generally has no formulaic adjustment for factors such as child care, additional dependents and children's extraordinary medical expenses. The Delaware-Melson formula, adopted by four states (Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, and West Virginia), was developed by Delaware Judge Elwood F. Melson Jr. in 1979. Considered the most complicated of the three models, this formula calculates supprt via a three-step process: 1) deducting each parent's minimal self-support needs from gross or net income, 2) calculating the primary care needs of the child(ren), and 3) based on the remaining income of each parent, adding a Standard of Living Allowance (SOLA) to the prmary support needs of the child(ren). The Delaware-Melson formula does provide calculation adjustments for child care, additional dependents, extraordinary medical expenses and equally shared joint custody.

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