Should certain things be counted as child support?

[ZoeyKaspian]

Just an interesting question. Let's say a dad has $300, is divorced or is not with the mom anymore. The mom needs the child to have clothes for school and asks the dad to buy them. He says yes, he will do that and spends $300 on clothes for his son or daughter to go back to school in. Should that have been counted as child support or do you think it should just count as "helping out"? Just curious

 

[Piper84]

Is the mother already receiving child support?

In situations like this I think it's best to have everything in writing and official to avoid problems. If the father wants to buy the child new school clothes outside of that he's welcome to.

 

[Foogirl]

Depends on how much is child support is, I suppose. If I were the mum, I'd add up all the things I paid for that his child support doesn't cover and thrust it at him.

 

[midori1999]

Personally, I think it's helping out, as if the Mum could afford it out of child support, surely she wouldn't have asked and presumably the Dad can afford it if he was able to buy it.

IME, most child support payments are pitiful.

 

[hopingforit]

Honestly, this is a situation that DH and I deal with already. He has 2 children with his ex wife and pays about 30% of his after tax income to her in child support plus he pays more for childcare because his ex wants to drop one of the kids at daycare after school plus he pays for their insurance and 2/3 the cost of all school and medical related things. As you can imagine this leaves us with just enough money to pay the bills and pretty much nothing else. I do think that should be counted as child support. I mean, in our case, she works, her new DH works, plus she gets the money from DH. It ends up being that we have 60% of his income to pay our bills+things for 4 people and she has 40% to pay for 2 people (not even everything they need because as I said, DH pays 2/3 of that too). In our case, child support is child support and everything else is extra and not counted towards that and I think some of it should be. Child support is to pay for the things kids need, school clothes included. If you've ever been to court over this stuff, you'd know that the courts are rarely fair to the fathers. This is one subject that just frustrates me more than you can imagine.

 

[kerrie24]

I think if the mother is receiving maintenance then she should have enough to get the stuff but if the dad offered I would count it as a gift,not maintenance.