Would I have to pay him child support?

Can anyone give me some advice? If I left Df after 10 years together and let him have the children alternating 2 days one week and 3 days the next would I need to pay him child support? What about if it was 3 days one week and 4 the next?

He has no assets beyond super. I have a car, a few thousand dollars of shares and my own super. He earns around $1250 after tax and hecs a fortnight working 3 days and I earn around $2200 a fortnight working 4 days.

He has been their primary carer recently for 6 months on parental leave from work, I have had 36 months over the last 4 1/2 years as primary carer off work. Will this influence anything?

If you go to the child support website they have an online calculator where you can punch in the numbers of how much you earn, how much he earns and how often you have the children overnight. At the end you can then do a what if scenario to see how earnings and time with change the payments.

Reality is you could end up paying him child support if you earn more than him and have significant shared custody. CSA I believe wont care who has taken care of the children in the past just what the shared care arrangement is now.

yes you will because you earn more then him and would be doing 50/50 care by that arrangement.

The Childsupport goes on the Financial year that has passed so the 2009/2010 gross income of both of you.
and in relation to who cares for the children it looks at now not the past.

I 2nd going on to their website and punching in the figures. It gives a good indication of what you'll both be recieving paying

Cat xox

if you do the 3nights one week 4 the next then you're doign 50/50 shared care and based on your incomes, yes, you'd have to pay him child support

if you did 2nights one week, 3 the next, your care percentages would be different (64/36). the child support agency would take out a set amount for living expenses for each of you, pool the rest, work out 64% of that (for you) - if you earn more than that amount of what is in the "pool" you may have to pay him some child support. if you earn less than 64% of what remains in the pool, he may have to pay you.

it is a complicated scenario - it is based on taxable income (NOT take home) so him paying HECS and getting less take home is irrelevant. the fact that he had 6 months off to care for your children might impact things though, as his income LAST financial year will be significantly reduced, and as a general rule, they base assessments on last financial year....

another that agrees with punching in the numbers on the child support site (or you can do it on the c'link/fao estimators and run the fao/child support stuff together

I agree with going to the website. I used it to work out what was the best arrangement fincancially for me and my XH. He wanted to pay less but wasn't able to have 50% so we worked out the best for both of us.

CSA people are also really good on the phone as well - normally.

Can I just add (although it might not be relevant to your situation) that sometimes even the primary carer who has significant care has to pay the non custodial parent child support. This happened to me, as well as my former boss.

I ended up dropping a day of work to avoid it. My ex has my DD about 70 nights a year and in 8 years has paid a total of $668 child support. There was no way in hell I was giving him a cent!!!

Hi! I've been in a similar situation and I got caught out paying privately, then I wised up and started using CSA.

I reckon there are pro's and con's to both sides. But discovered that the money I'd already paid didn't count!

It is worthwhile checking out stuff. I've been wading around heaps of sites looking for information and support. It took me ages to think about coming back and joining a site like this! Which I'd done for my previous pregnancy!

Another place which I found some good (and some pretty average kind of ranting stuff) was on Facebook. A couple of Aussie groups / pages going where people are putting some good stuff up. One was something to do with Child Support and being Awesome (sorry...off the top of my head! I just rememebered the awesome bit!).

Best of luck. It is a tough road to negotiate. Figure our your rights, as I'm finding it is the stuff you don't think of that gets you. In my case it was private health insurance, PLUS the paying privately stuff.