Child Support in North Carolina
North Carolina law requires both parents to provide for the reasonable needs of their child. In 1990, North Carolina established Child Support Guidelines for courts to use in determining the appropriate amount of child support incases where the combined income of the parent’s is $300,000 or below These guidelines take into account the average cost of raising a child and are reviewed and revised at least once every four years.
North Carolina’s Child Support Guidelines provide a rebuttable presumption as to each parent’s child support obligation. This means that although the guidelines may call for a specific amount of child support, a parent can still present evidence to the court as to why child support should be more or less than what the guidelines provide. The guidelines use an income-shares model to determine each parent’s support obligation. If a parent makes less than the federal poverty level, a self-support reserve limits the parent’s obligation to $50.00 per month. The guidelines calculate each parent’s share of a child’s monthly expenses by using the parents’ monthly incomes before deductions as well as payments by either party for work-related child care, health insurance and extraordinary expenses. “Extraordinary expenses” can include costs such as special or private schooling to meet a child’s particular needs or travel for a child going between the parents’ homes.
If the combined income of the parents exceeds $300,000, child support is calculated based on the following factors: the reasonable needs of the child for health, education, and maintenance, having due regard to the estates, earnings, conditions, accustomed standard of living of the child and the parties, the child care and homemaker contributions of each party, and other facts of the particular case. Payments ordered for the support of a minor child must be paid monthly on the first day of the month. Payments ordered for the support of a child terminate when the child reaches the age of 18 except:
- if the child is otherwise emancipated, payments shall terminate at that time; or
- if the child is still in primary or secondary school when the child reaches age 18, support payments shall continue until the child graduates, otherwise ceases to attend school on a regular basis, fails to make satisfactory academic progress towards graduation, or reaches age 20, whichever comes first, unless the court in its discretion orders that payments stop at age 18 or prior to high school graduation.
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