family law summary

8/9/2019 Family Law Summary

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Summary of Family Law Bills - January 28, 2015

15-0101

Child Support

This bill changes the definition of obligor for determining child support and removes the

presumption that a person with primary physical custody is not an obligor and makes it so thatparents with the higher total child support obligation in the calculations is the obligor. This bill

makes conforming changes through Minnesota Statutes, section 518A.34.

This bill also changes how the parenting expense adjustment is calculated and allows the court to

reply on the court ordered parenting time or to use evidence that show the parents are using a

substantially different parenting time schedule to determine the parenting expense adjustment to

the child support.

Finally this bill changes how the parenting expense adjustment is calculated using overnights or

overnight equivalents instead of a percentage of their parenting time.

15-0155

Income Tax Dependency Exemption

This bill adds a new subdivision to the existing child support law to provide direction to the courton how to award child income tax dependency exemptions.

The court has always had the ability to award these but there was no previous direction in the law

on how to award them or on how the award of the exemption interacted with the federal code on

deductions, so this provides clarification on how the award in a child support or custody caseinteracts with what is required by the IRS and how it interacts with the new tax credits through

the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

This does not change the existing child support provision in Minnesota Statutes, section

518A.43, that allows the court to deviate on a child support calculation based on the award of a

dependency exemptionthe court still has the ability to consider that when determining if adeviation from a standard calculation is appropriate.

15-1587

Parenting Time

This bill changes the rebuttable presumption for parenting time that a party is entitled to a

minimum of 25 percent, instead of at least 25percent.

This bill changes the existing law on the award of compensatory parenting time when court

ordered parenting time has been denied to one parent. It requires the court to award

compensatory time when the denial of time, either court ordered or agreed to, was repeated andintentional unless the denial was necessary to protect the childs physical or emotional health.


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Summary of Family Law Bills January 28, 2015

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The bill requires the court to award additional remedies currently available under the law insituations where the court finds that there was a previous court finding of intentional interference

with parenting time.

This bill also allows parties to restore the courts ability to have jurisdiction over spousalmaintenance modification by agreement of both parties and clarifies which tax documents need

to be provided for child support cases. It also allows parties in child support or maintenance

cases to use a retroactive effective date for support orders when the parties agree to a date, aparty fails to provide necessary financial information, or the court finds that a party violated a

court order to provide information.

15-1588

Rights Provided to Parents - (Appendix A)

This bill takes the information that was previously required to be provided to parents and puts itinto a form that is to be included in each custody order so that the court has granted the rights in

the order. The previous notice was called appendix A and attached to custody orders.

Judgment Awards

Allows family law judgment interest to be calculated as simple annual interest rate that is tied to

the market instead of the statutory 10 percent rate and allows parties to agree to a lower than

statutory interest rate or no interest rate for certain family court judgments, but not child support

or spousal maintenance judgments.

15-1589

Recognition of Parentage

Clarifies a custody and parenting time action will still have to be brought after signing a

Recognition of Parentage and that a ROP is a basis for bringing that action and seeking custody

and parenting time. This bill also expands the notice requirements of the ROP form and includes

specific information about what rights the ROP does and does not grant related to paternity,custody, parenting time, and child support, and requires verification that the parents have seen

the DHS educational materials on the ROP and that the individual providing the form must

provide oral notice of the information.

Child Support

Changes the definition of obligor for the purposes of spousal maintenance or child support sothat it can include a parent who has primary physical custody. This bill also changes how

imputed income is calculated so that instead of calculating based on full-time employment at 150

percent of the federal or state minimum wage, it is calculated at 30 hours per week at 100 percentof the minimum wage. It also gives the court discretion to not award child support when a parent


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Summary of Family Law Bills January 28, 2015

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has 10 to 45 percent of the parenting time and has a significant disparity in income so that anaward would be detrimental to the child.

This bill also allows child support arrears to be reported to consumer reporting agencies under

certain circumstances.

15-1169

Custody Disputes - Best interest factors changed and joint custody provisions repealed

This bill rewrites the existing best interest factors and then ties unmarried parents custody

determinations to that statute so that the new best interest factors will apply to both married and

unmarried parents.

Repeals certain custody and joint custody considerations and requires custody evaluations to

state the positions of the parties.

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