Medical care costs are important components of child support

Supporting a child involves more than just paying child support payments. Children also need medical care, which is often an expense that isn’t covered by child support payments. In most child support cases, one parent is ordered to get medical insurance for the child; however, not all medical expenses are covered by insurance. Other medical expenses, such as co-pays, must be also be paid.

Generally, a child support order will lay out a plan for who is responsible for which medical care expenses for the child. The method that is used to convey the stipulations can vary.

In some cases, uninsured and unreimbursed medical payments are handled on a percentage basis. In this case, each parent is responsible for paying a certain percentage of the bill. For example, the bill might have to be split 50-50, which means each parent pays 50 percent of the medical costs.

The other way that the medical payments might be handled is through a dollar amount determination. In this case, one parent is responsible for paying all medical bills up to a certain amount and the other parent must pay anything over that amount. For example, the order might say that the custodial parent must pay $500 per year in out-of-pocket medical costs. Anything over that would be the responsibility of the non-custodial parent.

Some child support orders might not cover medical care costs for the child. If you need medical care costs covered in your child support order or if you think the current order should be changed, you need to learn how to petition the court to make the changes happen.

Source: FindLaw, “Uninsured Medical Expenses and Child Support,” accessed Jan. 06, 2016

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