The Kansas Supreme Court has approved changes to the Kansas Child Support Guidelines effective January 1, 2010. The majority of the Guidelines remain the same, however, there are three updates have been made to the guidelines, two concerning the establishment of medical support obligations and one including the 2009 and 2010 tax schedules.

Medical support obligations

The changes concerning the medical support obligations were made necessary due to amended federal regulations, CFR Sec. 303.31 – Securing and Enforcing Medical Support Obligations. The Court made every effort to keep the updates to the Guidelines as simple as possible while bringing the Guidelines up to date with the new federal regulation. This was accomplished by updating Section III.B, General Instructions, Applications by adding a new section 10 – Birth Expenses. The application of this change will generally only affect parties who have children and are not married, most likely in a paternity suit, or parties divorcing who have a large amount of debt associated with the birth a child. The new section 10 reads as follows: 10. Birth Expenses If a judgment for birth expenses is awarded, the presumed amount is the parent’s proportionate share as reflected on line D.2 of the Worksheet. If a parent’s proportionate share of the birth expenses is more than 5% of the parent’s gross annual income projected over five years, the parent may request deviation from the presumed amount.

Health, Dental and Optometric Expenses Another change in response to CFR 303.31 was made to 4. Health, Dental, Orthodontic, and Optometric Expenses (Line D.4) a. The change requires the parents to determine what is the actual cost of insurance for the child or children.   This has been applied by courts for some time now.  Many parents want to put the full cost to them on the child support worksheet.  Just because health insurance for your family costs $250 out of your paycheck, this does not mean you get to deduct the full $250.  You only get to deduct the amount that it costs to cover the children.  Therefore, you must determine the cost for covering you as a single person and subtract this from the cost to cover you and your children.

2010 Tax schedules The third change was new Federal Income Tax Factors extending the current tables from 2008 to 2010. A copy of Administrative Order No. 216, amended November 17, and a strikeout version of the amended guidelines can be found at here.