Transcript
Let’s talk further about the income section and get into more details here. If anything has changed in your monthly gross wages from date of separation to current, you can star it and make a note at the bottom, so you are allowed to provide more information than what is listed here. Next, you’ll have investment interest income, interest dividend income. Most likely you’ll need to look at your last year’s tax return to provide an estimate of this.
For most people, this isn’t going to dramatically affect the income, but for some people this is the bulk of their income, so it becomes really important to determine what is an accurate reflection of what is projected, and what is the date of separation versus the current.
Bonuses and commissions, of course, can be variable, but they do need to be factored in. It could be that we provide this information in a different format. We make a note here that bonuses and commissions are variable, but that the last year’s bonuses provided x amount of monthly income.
Alimony received or child support received this would be alimony and child support most likely received from a different relationship because alimony and child support are being determined in this financial affidavit. Finally, we have just a catch all of other income, and this can be a lot. There’s vacation holiday pay, there’s disability income, social security retirement income, car allowances, cell phone allowances, per diems, so any other income needs to be factored in here.
Now, the mandatory monthly deductions this actually is a very important section. A lot of people assume, well, taxes are what they are, And they are, but you to make sure that your pay stub is actually reflecting the reality of your taxes. So for example, for Social Security taxes, social security taxes are maxed out after someone earns a certain income and that level changes often annually. So every year we have to look and see what is the social security max.
For example, right now it’s in the one hundred thirty range, so if your income goes above a certain amount, the government is no longer going to withhold social security income tax. If you’re figuring this if you are using this affidavit and you’re the supporting spouse and you’re figuring this out as you are, in those last couple months where social security is no longer being deducted, you might forget to put social security in here. The best thing to do if your income is definitely above the the max is to figure out what the max social security would be, what the max amount is, and then project it out over twelve months and add that number in here.
Retirement that’s an issue that comes up quite a bit. Maybe they’ve changed how much they’re putting in retirement, How much they put in retirement date of separation versus current is different. Judges know that retirement withdrawals are voluntary, so often they are looking at this category and figuring out whether or not to add that back into somebody’s income. But you need to accurately reflect what you have coming out at date of separation and what you have coming out currently.
And then finally, and state income tax. Once again, what’s coming out of your pay may not accurately reflect the amount of taxes that you pay. So for example, let’s say that you, have a withholding of a certain amount and you put that because that’s based on what your pay stub says. And then at the end of the year, you get a ten thousand dollars tax refund. Well, means that really your taxes were almost eight hundred dollars a month lower than they should have been here. So you want to try as best you can to accurately reflect it, but it is something that we have to be aware of. We certainly have to write, well, what was it at date of separation?
And then one of the things that we do before trial is we try to make it as accurate as possible so that when the court is going to make determinations, they’re not, you know, changing anything based on a number that’s not what your real net is.
Okay, and then you’ll see of course these are all of the voluntary deductions, but of course for a lot of people like health insurance, dental, vision, those aren’t aren’t really voluntary, but this is what is being taken out of your pay to pay for the premium.
So you do want to separately factor in, well, you doing something different for an HSA or flexible spending account of some sort? That’s a voluntary contribution, whereas, health insurance often is covering the entire family. So you want to make sure that it’s clear, well, how much is the health insurance? How much is the dental? How much is the vision? And sometimes that has changed by the time we get to trial, and so you can reflect that as well.
One really important thing to do here as you’re preparing this document and as you’re figuring out exactly what are your monthly expenses, what are going to be your spouse’s monthly expenses?
If you are covering the family on health insurance, it’s really important to go ahead and figure out how much of that premium cost goes towards your spouse, how much of it goes towards you, and how much of it goes towards the children. So asking your provider, asking your HR at your work to find out and to get some kind of printout or recognition of how much of this health insurance is going for you versus the children versus your spouse. That will help when we’re negotiating exactly what is the cost of health insurance for everybody.
Dental and vision sometimes people don’t have those, you just skip those if you don’t. Life insurance disability these are only if you’re paying a monthly premium out of your check. So there’s going to be a different section here if you’re paying life insurance or disability after you receive your net income. These are only deductions that are coming straight from your check. So this whole first page is really just about detailing out your pay stub. Next, we’re going to cover Wake County financial affidavit expenses.
Lisa is a leading figure in North Carolina’s family law field, dedicated to guiding clients through challenging times with compassion and expertise. As the President and Owner of Rosen Law Firm, P.A., Lisa has built a successful practice specializing in divorce, child custody, child support, alimony, equitable distribution, and domestic violence. She has been a North Carolina Board-Certified Specialist in Family Law since 1998.
