It is increasingly common for parties to settle on exact 50-50 time sharing for the children.
Although this is becoming well-settled territory among parties, it is surprisingly still unsettled territory with respect to the child support guidelines in New Jersey.
This blog explores issues and solutions when tackling child support in exactly-equal time sharing cases in New Jersey.
The Core Problem: Equal Parenting Time is Not Addressed in the Guidelines
The child support guidelines in New Jersey require that one parent be designated as the parent of primary residence (“PPR”).
But the way the child support guideline law is structured, you can get a different result just by changing the Parent of Primary Residence, even though everything else is the same.
So that creates a real conundrum: in cases of exactly equal parenting, it should not matter which parent is designated as the Parent of Primary Residence. But under the guidelines as written, it does.
Federal Tax Law Custodial v. Noncustodial Parent
We might look for guidance to the federal income tax, which also has a requirement of choosing a majority time parent for tax benefits, including Head of Household filing status and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Tax law provides that the custodial or majority time parent is the parent with whom the child lived for the greater number of nights during the year.
As there are 365 overnights in a year there will usually be a parent with more time than the other.
But if the parties insist that the time spent with each parent is exactly equal, then the IRS applies a tiebreaker rule: the “custodial parent” is the parent with the higher adjusted gross income.
This seems innocuous, but in fact, this determination often benefits the government, because the higher income parent is less likely to be eligible for the various deductions and benefits that accrue to the parent who is deemed to be “custodial.”
New Jersey Rules on PPR and PAR Designations
There is no reason that this IRS tiebreaker rule should apply to the designation of “Parent of Primary Residence” (PPR) for New Jersey child support purposes. And by and large, it doesn’t.
Our first stop in trying to untangle this is the guidelines themselves. The Guidelines can be found in Appendix IX of the New Jersey Court Rules. In Appendix IX-A, the NJ Child Support Guidelines state (in part):
The PPR and PAR are defined as follows:
- Parent of Primary Residence (PPR) – The parent with whom the child spends most of his or her overnight time. The primary residence is the home where the child resides for more than 50% of the overnights annually. If the time spent with each parent is equal (50% of overnights each), the PPR is the parent with whom the child resides while attending school. Overnight means the majority of a 24-hour day (i.e., more than 12 hours).
- Parent of Alternate Residence (PAR) – This is the parent with whom the child resides when not living in the primary residence.
So the guideline looks to the household where the child resides when they are attending school.
But what if the child attends school while residing with each parent?
The Rule is silent, and there is no further guidance.
Why This Matters: Mandatory Use of the Guidelines
Under Rule 5:6A, the guidelines must be used as a rebuttable presumption to establish and modify all child support orders. The guidelines must be applied in all child support actions. The Rule specifies Sole and Shared Parenting worksheets that have columns for PPR and PAR data.
Someone must be the Parent of Primary Residence. But there’s no way to decide who.
This ambiguity opens the door to:
- Advocacy-driven designations
- Inconsistent results among professionals
- Outcomes that may not reflect actual parenting arrangements
The Guiding Philosophy of the New Jersey Support Guidelines
Before exploring solutions, it is important to remember the underlying philosophy of the Child Support Guidelines.
New Jersey’s Child Support Guidelines are designed to help courts establish fair and adequate child support by reflecting the shared, ongoing responsibility of both parents to support their children. The guidelines are based on the principle that children are entitled to benefit from the current income of both parents and should not suffer economically because of divorce or non-marital birth.
Using economic data that approximates what intact families spend on their children, the Guidelines aim to preserve a comparable standard of living for children in separate households. The challenge in equal parenting cases is applying this philosophy within the framework of the guideline calculations.
Family Law Software Solution: Rotate PPR
Family law software allows professionals to model a true equal timesharing case by entering:
- 182.5 overnights per year, or
- 3.5 overnights per week.
Then users can run scenarios with each parent as PPR . (When calculating child support with this method, each parent must be PRR for all children in order not to trigger a split custody calculation.)
Then, determine the difference between the two results. The lower child support result is subtracted from the higher, with the difference being the support award owed by the parent with the higher support amount.
Note that Family Law Software will automatically assign the tax status of Head of Household to the PPR and Single to the other party. So in each scenario, make sure that the tax filing status is correct.
Would you like to see the effects on a side-by-side basis rather than creating multiple PDFs?
Use the Family Law Software “Support What If” tool located in the Analysis tab.
The “Wunsch-Deffler” Method
In the absence of statutory clarity, the courts have attempted to devise a solution.
The case of Wunsch-Deffler v. Deffler (406 N.J. Super. 505; 968 A.2d 713; 2009 N.J. Super.) is a published New Jersey Superior Court opinion that addresses equal parenting time directly.
The Wunsch-Deffler approach seeks to mathematically calculate the portion of a shared custody support award that is spent directly on the children for items such as clothing, personal care, and entertainment, so it can be split equally when parenting time is truly equal.
Many professionals consider this method better suited to equal parenting arrangements because it aligns more closely with actual expense-sharing for families.
The Wunsch-Deffler formula has been built into the software. The calculation, if applied, appears on the Shared Custody worksheets at line 15.
To choose this option, click the box that is located in the support calculator just beneath the section where children are entered.
Conclusions
Equally shared parenting is becoming an increasingly common in custodial arrangement in New Jersey and across the country. Unfortunately, the current New Jersey Child Support Guidelines do not address how the PPR should be designated, or how child support should be calculated when parenting time is exactly equal.
We can hope that the New Jersey Supreme Court Family Division Practice Committee will revisit this issue and amend the Guidelines to provide clear direction and a specific formula for equally shared parenting cases.
Until then, the parties can either split the difference between outcomes with each party as Parent of Primary Residence, or apply the Wunsch-Deffler formula.