What Qualifies as Child Support?

Posted on August 10, 2005 by J. Benjamin Stevens

In order to qualify as child support, the payments received by an ex-spouse must be designated as child support in the divorce or separation agreement. If the agreement lumps the payments together as "family support" or "alimony," or doesn't otherwise designate a specific portion of each payment as child support, none of the payment will be considered child support for tax purposes.

This can have adverse tax consequences for the recipient of child support payments, because family support or alimony is taxable to the recipient. So instead of receiving nontaxable child support, the ex-spouse will be receiving alimony, which is taxable to the payee, regardless of what the payee actually uses the money for.

Copyright © 2005 Nolo
Tags:
Trackbacks (0) Links to blogs that reference this article Trackback URL
Comments (1) Read through and enter the discussion with the form at the end
eric todd caskey - January 1, 2007 12:44 PM

my 17 year old daughter is no longer living in my ex-spouses home and she is living with boyfriend and no longer in school.am i still required to pay child support in s.c.

Post A Comment / Question Use this form to add a comment to this entry.







Remember personal info?
Send To A Friend Use this form to send this entry to a friend via email.