This is a very useful screen that allows you to ask “what if” about all kinds of things relating to the financial settlement.
Things About Which You Can Ask What If
To see the things about which you can as What If, click the link labeled “Items About Which to Ask What If.”
You will see that you can as ask about children’s expenses, who pays the mortgage, parties’ wages, child support, spousal support, exemptions, and more.
Options
Next, click the button for Options
Calculation Options
One of these options is whether we should assume child support and spousal support start at the beginning of the year, or not.
Setting it to start at the beginning of the year will give your results as they would be during a full year of child and spousal support payments.
Setting it to start when it actually starts will show you the actual results for the current year.
There is no right way to do it. Set it to reflect the result that you want.
The remaining options are explained in on-screen help.
Specify Result to Display
There are various options with respect to what result is displayed.
- You can show a single year or multiple years.
- You can show more or less detail.
- You can include all living expenses in the calculation of the bottom line, or show income after tax (but before living expenses).
Expenses to Count in the Calculation of Income After Taxes
The concept of “income after taxes” is to show income after non-discretionary expenses.
Taxes are certainly a non-discretionary expense.
So are some of the other items listed, including union dues and mandatory retirement contributions.
You may specify other items to be included in this calculation.
The more such items you include, the closer you get to the concept of “income after non-discretionary expenses.”
The fewer such items you include, the closer you are to purely “income after taxes.”
Creating What If Scenarios
To create a What If scenario, click the button at the top labeled “What-If Entries and Results.”
The new scenario will start populated with the actual child and spousal support amounts, actual wage amounts, and actual exemptions.
You may then change this.
You will see the results at the bottom of the screen.
At the top of each column you will see a couple of links.
The link labeled “hide” will hide that scenario.
The link labeled “clear” will clear the numbers from the scenario.
You may create as many scenarios as you wish.
Showing multiple years
You can show the results for multiple years as follows:
Click the link at the top of the screen to set what if analysis options.
On the screen that appears, under the heading “Specify Result to Display,” select one of the multi-year projection options.
Showing the graph
The software can show a graph of gross incomes, and incomes after child support, alimony, and taxes.
The two columns on the left show each party’s gross income.
The two columns on the right show income after child support, alimony, and taxes.
This is a very helpful chart, which can show the impact of child support and alimony on leveling the two parties’ incomes.
We show the graph only if there is just one scenario.
If you enter two or more scenarios, we can not show the graph.
Children’s Expenses
Please be careful: if you ask What If about children’s expenses, and those expenses are blank on the What If screen, they will be calculated as zero in the What If calculation.
If those expenses are blank, the What If calculation will not use the actual expenses that have been entered.
So if you want to ask What If about children’s expenses, be sure to enter the numbers that you choose in each of the children’s expense lines.
Who Pays Mortgages
If you asked What If about who pays the mortgage, please be sure to enter the percent paid by the party shown.
Otherwise, the software will assume that the mortgage is paid 0/100, by one party.
Updating Child Support with Alimony
In some states, if you change alimony, child support changes.
This is because the child support calculation is based in part on the alimony amount.
By default, the software will update the child support amount when you change the alimony amount, to reflect this linkage.
If you want to see this happen, you can not use actual child support in the What If calculation.
Conversely, if you choose to use actual child support in the What If calculation, then we cannot update child support when alimony changes.