Bay Area & Sacramento Area Family Law Blog

Divorced parents in California may be unaware of the varying types of child support cases that exist. The multiple types of cases can be confusing, especially as some individuals make direct payments to the custodial parent while others submit payments to the state in which the order was made. There are four main types of child support cases: IV-D, IV-A, IV-E and non-IV-D. These terms refer to Title IV of the 1975 Social Security Act, which addresses the grants made to states in order to provide aid and services to families with children in need.

IV-D cases refer to situations where a person receives assistance from the Office of Child Support Enforcement, including establishing paternity, finding the noncustodial parent or enforcing an order for child support. IV-A cases are those in which the custodial parent receives public assistance. Even though the noncustodial parent may be fully involved, the OCSE endeavors to recoup public assistance funds. In IV-E cases, a foster parent or relative is providing care for the children.

One of the arrangements that may be assigned when parents of minor children end their marriage is joint custody. In this type of arrangement, both parents share legal or physical custody, or both. California parents who are awarded joint custody of their children may have questions about the manner in which child support will be handled.

While the Child Support Standards Act regulates child support duties, it does not handle issues related to joint custody child support. Joint custody arrangements are addressed differently by the courts when decisions have to be made about child support. According to the law, the court is mandated to require the parent who is not responsible for the children on a daily basis to pay a portion of child support. The amount of child support will be determined by multiple factors, including the number of children in question and how much the parent earns.

A California divorce requires the division of marital property, which often includes individual retirement accounts. These vehicles can only have one name on them, but a divorce generally treats retirement savings as marital assets. An IRA inherited by a person, however, could be classified as a nonmarital asset. Despite this status, some splitting couples have been dividing their inherited IRAs within their divorce settlements. Unfortunately, there are no Internal Revenue Code provisions that deal with this issue.

People have been bringing their inherited IRAs into the divorce process because they want to trade them for some other marital asset. The changes coming to the tax treatment of alimony beginning with divorces that are finalized in 2019 also appear to be driving this action because people might need funds without relying on alimony payments.

A parent in California who either needs to collect child support or pay it could run into problems as the years go by. When child support goes unpaid, a parent could approach a state agency and request an enforcement action. On the other side of the coin, a parent experiencing financial difficulty, like unemployment, could take steps to limit falling behind on payments by petitioning a court to modify the amount of support owed.

When a parent reports unpaid child support to the state's enforcement office, the agency will contact the noncustodial parent. Sometimes this requires finding the person by searching databases from the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Federal Parent Locator Service. After the agency finds the person, enforcement actions to collect child support arrearages could include garnishing wages or seizing funds from a bank account. If the person's current income cannot be determined, the agency will estimate future payments based on previous work histories.