Family Law Section

The Guidelines Are Coming! The Guidelines Are Coming!

By Mark R. Ashton, Esq.

In early 1970s when I was student at Wissahickon High School and the local school board was still within the control of the Lenape tribe, the English department made all of us write weekly essays that were reviewed by a person labeled the “theme reader.” You would submit your weekly essay expressing your “weighty” views on the given topic and the following week, you would be handed a marked up version of your opus as reviewed by a person who actually wrote real English. It was simultaneously an enlightening and somewhat depressing experience. If mankind had learned to split the atom, why was it wrong to split the infinitive?

We have had state support guidelines since the late 1980s. Before those days, you took your client to Domestic Relations and two guys named Elmer Lentz and Joe Dougherty would tell you what the support was due based upon their experience and their reaction to whatever they had consumed at lunch. Then, those guys retired and the government in Washington told every state that their 4-D money for poor people would be cut off unless statewide uniform guidelines were adopted and amended every five years. And thus, every five years the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania employs economists to tell us how much support is due and what is the highest amount a wretch can earn without paying support for the offspring.

In late August, the 2022 revised guidelines came out, effective January 1, 2022. As I read the changes, I realized what had become of the theme readers who harassed me through the 1970s. They now write/edit the guidelines. In past iterations, the payor became the obligor or some other variation of an “-or” (e.g., if the person owing support is a donkey or mule, the “Eey-or”). If there are substantive changes in this, I confess that I lost my way and I did not see the usual “comments” to the guidelines. I might have given this greater consideration except that my buddy Gary Friedlander asked me to do this in 10 days and no more than 800 words. Suffice to say that I saw lots of wordsmithing, most of which did little to provide more clarity.

But, the first question is always, what happened with the numbers? So, here is what I sent to my Fox Rothschild partners as my analysis of what happened when the new guidelines were issued. The guidelines go up to six (6) children but this is Montgomery County so I stopped at four (4). The increases are dramatic especially if you, like me, compare them with the CPI-U for the Philly metro market. That’s the Department of Labor’s Cost of Living Index. Children 1 2 3 4

5,000 combined net 2017 guidelines 990 1415 1644 1837 2022 guidelines 1006 1506 1789 1998 Increase % 1.6 6.4 8.8 8.7

10,000 combined net 2017 guidelines 1443 2044 2355 2630 2022 guidelines 1559 2280 2642 2952 Increase % 8 11.5 12.2 12.2

15,000 combined net 2017 guidelines 1834 2586 2972 3314 2022 guidelines 2125 3142 3687 4118 Increase % 14 17.7 24 24.3

30,000 combined net 2017 guidelines 2839 3902 4365 4824 2022 guidelines 3608 4250 4951 5530

Increase % 27 8.9 13.4 14.6

Without becoming tedious (or more tedious) in 2016 when the data would have been collected for the 2017 guidelines the CPI in our region was roughly 247. In 2020 when the 2022 data would have been harvested it was at 261. That’s a six percent increase. The support guidelines increased generally 8-24%.

Meanwhile for those dividing expenses in households with more than $30,000 a month in net income (roughly $600,000 a year gross) the presumptive minimum had the floor knocked out of it. Here is the comparison of percentage of incomes beyond the $30,000 guideline cap. Presumptive Support above $30K/month 2017 8.6% 11.8% 12.9% 14.6% 2022 4 4 4.7 5.3

So, if you were a person with -0- income and two kids in your primary custody in 2017 with an “obligor” making $40,000 a month net of taxes, your child support would have been $5,082. As of 2022, your support for the same kids falls by $432 to $4,650. Of course, the kids will understand once you show them the Department of Labor charts and explain the difference between All Urbans Consumers versus Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. If they’re sharp they may ask how a 6% rise in average prices yielded an 8% decrease in support. But that seems to reflect the Supreme Court’s decision in Hanrahan v. Bakker, 186 A.3d. 958 (Pa. 2018) where the guideline amount came in at roughly $70,000 a month, a number the majority found a bit too frothy.