Originally posted by Halo
Thank you all, excellent and thought provoking insights.
Would like to hear more from women too, and more on the following specifics:
1. How long children are expected to be supported, e.g., to age 18 or 21.
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Children have the right to be supported until they reach the age of 18 or finish high school, whatever comes LAST.
2. Whether children are "owed" college or other education or training beyond high school.
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LOL, no. Again, it would be impossible to set generic rules here, since we might end up forcing a widow on minimum income to pay for her sons tuition, or if we swing the other way, a multi-billionare who wont have to pay for his son going to community college (or whatever, you get the idea).
Children are supported until thye are 18 or finish high school, after that they are on their own.
3. If children are involved and if alimony is ordered, the reasonableness of my formula proposed in the thread starter. Since no one has commented on its specifics so far, I'm assuming either it's too complicated to bother with or it's okay.
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First, let me start out by saying there are two kinds of alimony, one is to the spouse, one is to the kid. I see alimony to the spouse as a form of socialism and I hate that, its complete BS.
Now, alimony to the child..
The idea behind alimony to the child is that the child should not be any better or worse off depending on which parent it lives with. The idea is that the child should live with the parent that is best for the child, and that any difference in living standard for the child depending on which parent it lives with should be compensated by the alimony.
The formula for this we have over here is something like this
A = Economic need of the child (or cost for food, clothes etc)
B = Costs regarding childcare, school, etc
C = Other costs (sports activity etc)
D = Income of the child
A+B+C-D = The need of the child
Economic situation of the parent (calculated for both parents)
E = income (both from work or capital)
F = taxes
G = expenses
E-F-G = surplus
If the child lives with you, you get to decuct more expenses, if you are remarried, part of your spouses income will be added to yours. There are rules regarding which expenses are accepted in this formula or not.
Now, here comes the formula
Need of the child x (surplus of the "other" parent/sum of both parents surpus) = alimony
So, if dad has a surplus of 100, mom has a surplus of 20, the child has a need of 50, we get
50x100/120 = 41
Numbers can never be negative, instead the surplus is set to 0. If the dad has 0 surplus, the government steps in and pays a certain sum to the child every month, this sum is then becomes a debt for the dad.