Beware, visitation can affect child support

I hate to give away "dirty divorce secrets" like this one. It's not that I want to keep the secrets to myself and to other family lawyers who've done this long enough to know all the tricks. It's just that, by trying to save people from getting stung, I know I'm also helping people to "sting" others. I'm hoping this advice will be used to help people get child support they deserve and not helping people from tricking others into lowered support.

Still, we lawyers have a saying: "The truth will out!" Yeah, I never really understood that saying, either, but it's by Shakespeare, so it must mean something important.

So let me out the truth on how being generous about visitation affects child support. I can only hope, as I always do, that this knowledge will be used for good and not evil.

You already know that giving the kids more time with the other parent is usually good for the kids. You know that the more exposure the kids have to your ex, the more well-rounded they'll be, the more they'll be able to adjust to the divorce. I applaud you for this sentiment. Studies show that kids do better when they have significant contact with both parents. Agreeing to more visitation with your ex is usually a good idea.

Now here's the reason not to do it:

Under Florida's child support guidelines, if you kindly (or even unkindly) agree to allow your ex to have over 40% of the overnights (the family law system thinks in terms of overnights, not days, when calculating time with the kids) your child support could be--and almost certainly will be--drastically reduced. I've seen child support reduced from $1500 per month to $200 per month. That's how much kindness can cost you. Deciding for instance, to give your ex all of the summer? Guess what, your child support just dropped like rain in a Florida July. (In big buckets, for those of you from up north.) You think giving your ex 50-50 "custody" is the best way to go? You may just wipe out child support altogether. This is a sad truth.

I don't want to convince you not to agree to a lot of visitation. In most case, you should agree to lots of visitation. More often, it's the fair thing to do, the right thing to do, the best thing to do for the kids. Just keep in mind what will happen to your support. It's usually good to offer lots of visitation. It's always bad to be unable to afford to feed your kids.