Parents in Ohio have a lot of responsibility, and raising children is not always easy. There are many aspects of their lives that they need to make decisions about, and disciplining and raising children can also be expensive.
Parents have a duty to provide for their children, which means they need to provide shelter, food, clothes, pay for medical needs, school costs, extracurricular activities, and many other costs. Even if the parent's divorce, both parents need to contribute towards providing for their children.
However, this can become more complicated when parents divorce, which is why in most divorces there will be a child support order stating that one parent pays the other child support.
The amount that a parent pays depends on different factors, but the most important factors are the parents’ income and the percentage of that total income that each parent earns. The amount of income is then applied to a chart that determines the total amount of child support based on that combined income and each parent is responsible for their respective percentage of the total child support obligation.
Parents are also generally responsible for paying for their children’s needs until they become adults. So, parents are also ordered to pay child support until they become adults. For child support purposes this means that they must pay until the child turns 18 or until they graduate high school, whichever occurs later. However, child support ends at 19 even if the child has not completed high school. There are exceptions for handicapped children though and parents may be required to pay child support much longer in those situations.
There are many parents in Ohio who are divorced or were never married in the first place. In these situations, it is common for child support to be ordered to ensure that both parents are contributing to their children’s financial needs. These orders also ensure that parents are contributing until their children become adults. Child support can be more complicated than it may seem though and consulting with an experienced attorney may be useful.