Ohio Updates Child Support Law for the First Time in Nearly 30 Years
Ohio's child support law underwent a major overhaul representing the first update to child support law since 1992. Ohio's new child support law goes into effect on March 28, 2019. This means that only new child support orders after 3/28/19 will be affected or any child support orders where a modification is requested after this date.A few of the biggest changes are outlined below:
- The child support calculation itself is updated. The old child support law was more likely to produce a child support order for low income parents that was in an amount in excess of their ability to actually pay.
- There is a newly created "self-sufficiency reserve." This is a reserve to where the obligor (paying) parent has a minimum necessary reserve from their income to at least maintain a certain self-sufficiency living standard.
- The minimum child support order was increased from $50/month to $80/month.
- The calculation of child support for obligor parents with multiple families has been updated. It used to be that if a father was subject to multiple child support orders, then whoever filed the first child support order usually got more in child support then other parents of other children that filed against the father for other children. This has been changed so that children of different families get the same amount.
- There is now an automatic 10% credit given to a parent who has parenting time at least 90 nights out of the year.
- The Court is also required to consider an additional deviation above the 10% credit for an obligor parent who has parenting time over 90 nights per year.
- There are new caps on the Child Care Credit. Under the old law, day care expenses were one of the biggest factors in determining how much the child support obligation was. Now this is capped.
