Raising children can be a struggle, especially when you are doing it on your own after a divorce. So what happens when your child falls and breaks an arm or becomes seriously ill? Who pays for their medical care and their health insurance? In most cases, these questions are answered before your divorce is finalized.
During a divorce, a court will typically decide child custody. At the same time, a judge will also usually make a decision regarding the amount of child support that should be paid. Child support is generally paid to the spouse with primary physical custody of the child, as this parent is the one who will incur most of the costs of childcare.
When figuring out how much child support to award, a judge must include healthcare coverage for any children. This may mean ordering one spouse to insure the child or requiring each spouse to contribute to the cost of health insurance. The court must consider whether a child is already covered, whether coverage is accessible and whether the child has any special medical needs. At the same time, the court will determine how the parents should split the cost of unreimbursed or uninsured medical expenses. A parent who has laid out money for these costs may be able to request reimbursement from the child’s other parent.
If you choose to negotiate the terms of your divorce with your spouse instead of leaving it up to a judge, you may still be held to the state’s child support calculation formula by the judge who determines whether to accept the settlement.
To learn more about how childcare costs are divided in a divorce, consult a knowledgeable experienced Minnesota divorce lawyer at Appelhof, Pfeifer & Hart, P.A. today.
