Divorcing parents can choose from three ways to calculate overnight stays for Florida child support payments, because overnight stays play a huge role in calculating child support.
3 ways to count overnight stays
All three ways of counting overnight stays for Florida support totals have strengths and weaknesses. Some methods are faster, while others are more accurate.
These are the three ways of counting overnight stays:
- Estimate– Parents can estimate the number of overnight stays the non-custodial parent will have with the children each year. This method can work if the parents have a simple custody schedule, such as every other weekend and alternate holidays. The problem with this method is that it is not very accurate and you can accidentally skip overnight stays, such as vacations.
- Manual counting– Parents can look at a paper calendar and physically count the number of overnight stays in a year. Taking into account non-traditional overnight stays, such as holidays or special events, will improve accuracy. Manual counting increases the risk of human error, and it’s still easy to miss visits.
- Custody software– Parents can create a custody schedule on the computer and instantly get an accurate count of each parent’s overnight stays. Every time the schedule changes, the program recalculates total overnight stays for instant updates.
Calculation of overnight stays in Florida cases
Regardless of the counting method parents use, all overnight stays must be added together, including weekdays, weekends, holidays, vacations, and other special events.
To obtain the percentage of parenting time required by state guidelines, Florida parents should take the total number of overnight stays and then divide that number by 365. The answer represents the percentage of parenting time for the year. For example, if a non-residential Florida parent hosts the children for 125 nights, this would be 34 percent of the annual time.
Understanding of overnight stays and child support
There are three factors in Florida’s child support formula: income, number of children, and overnight stays.
Overnight totals are not an exclusive physical custody factor. This means that the children spend fewer than 73 overnight stays with the non-custodial parent. No child support credit is given in sole physical custody cases.
Overnight totals are a large part of joint physical custody. It allows the non-residential parent to receive a support adjustment based on the number of overnight stays, from 74 to 182. The more overnight stays with the children, the greater the adjustment and the smaller the amount.
Child support amounts in Florida are set by the court to ensure that children of divorced parents are always financially covered. In Florida, several factors contribute to child support calculations, such as income and overnight stays.
