Alimony and child support are separate and mostly unrelated concepts in New Jersey. However, alimony will have a big impact on the child support calculations. Alimony paid by the obligor reduces his/her net income. Likewise, alimony received by the obligee increases his/her net income. Since child support is calculated using the parents’ net income, the amount of child support paid will be reduced significantly (depending on the amount of alimony paid of course).

Alimony & Child Support in NJ

Our child support lawyers find that this analysis is very helpful to our clients when trying to deal with the net money paid out to the other parent. Consider this hypothetical, without an alimony obligation, the child support obligation is $100. However, with a $100 alimony obligation, the new child support obligation may be only $80. Thus, that $100 in alimony is only $80 extra to the client. Of course, alimony is tax deductible to the same client thus possibly reducing the real alimony obligation to more like $65 once the tax impact is factored in. This analysis can help clients who are reluctant to pay alimony see that they are not fighting over as much as they thought they were.