There was a move afoot in the summer of 2004 to revise the Alabama Child Support Guidelines, which have remained unchanged since (I think) the late 1980’s. It must have petered out, though. When I talked with Noah Funderburg this afternoon (Noah keeps up with this stuff better than anybody I know), he said he hadn’t heard anything recently about the revision.
If you use Internet Explorer (which I use only when absolutely necessary), you can figure child support according to the Alabama Child Support Guidelines using the interactive calculator on my web site. Just plug in the numbers and it will calculate child support according to Rule 32.
In my world, the child support guidelines seem reasonably accurate and fair. There are plenty of custodial parents who think they’re too stingy and plenty of noncustodial parents who think they’re too high (and even some vice versa), but most of my clients and their spouses tend to view them as pretty reasonable.
It would be a welcome change among my clients to extend the incomes covered by the guidelines. As configured today, they apply only in cases where the sum of Mom’s and Dad’s incomes is $120,000 or less. That may have covered the vast majority of Alabama’s divorced parents in the 1980’s, but there are many parents today whose combined incomes exceed it.