CUSTODY, RESIDENCE AND PARENTING TIME

Some important terminology to understand:

Legal Custody. Kansas uses two varieties of Legal Custody: Joint custody and Sole Custody. The two types are defined in Kansas Statue 23-3206.

Joint Legal Custody. If the court orders “joint legal custody” of a child with both parties, the parties shall have equal rights to make decisions in the best interests of the child.

Sole legal custody. The court may order the sole legal custody of a child with one of the parties when the court finds that it is not in the best interests of the child that both of the parties have equal rights to make decisions pertaining to the child.

Note: in determining such tax benefits as the Child Care Tax Credit, the IRS defines “the custodial parent” as ONLY the parent with whom the child lives the greater part of the year (or, in cases of exactly equal periods of overnight residency, the parent with the higher AGI)

The type of custody ordered does not automatically determine the child’s residence or parenting time.

Residence. Kansas uses three types of Residential Arrangements:

Residence with one or both parents.

Divided Residence where one or more, but not all, of the children live with each parent.

Non-parental residence. The Court may order temporary residence with a grandparent, aunt, uncle or adult sibling, or, another person or agency if the Court determines that a child is a “child in need of care” or that neither parent is fit to have the child’s residency.

Parenting Time. Kansas provisions regarding parenting time are found in Kansas Statute 23-3208.

A parent is entitled to reasonable parenting time unless the court finds, after a hearing, that the exercise of parenting time would seriously endanger the child’s physical, mental, moral or emotional health.

In the Bradley Child Support Calculator for Kansas, information regarding a child’s residence and parenting time are entered on the “Children” page. The residence selections are Mother, or Father. If there are multiple children on the worksheet, some of whom live with Mother and the remainder with Father, the Calculator will automatically prepare a separate worksheet for each household.

In all forms of residence, the Calculator will need information regarding the children’s Parenting Time arrangements. If the parents are sharing the children’s time equally, then the Calculator also needs information regarding the division of expenses under a court-approved written agreement, the maintenance of wardrobes for the children in each parent’s home, and who has been ordered to pay the children’s direct expenses.

Note that the information regarding parenting time arrangements is collected for the parties children as a group; not individually.

The Kansas Child Support Guidelines do not address what effect should be given to different parenting arrangements for individual children in a family (such as the direct expenses for one child to be paid by Mother and the direct expenses for another child to be paid by Father.)

The only way to properly calculate the child support such situations is to treat the children as being in a divided residence and apply parenting and expense details on a “household by household” basis, applying the same rules to all of the children in each household. If that is not possible, then the Court’s discretion must be applied to achieve an equitable result.