News
Court Rules on Child-Support Issue
RALEIGH — North Carolina social-service agencies can provide financial incentives to families that adopt “special needs” children, but not all marriages last. What effect do these adoptive-assistance payments have in determining child-support payments? The answer, according to the state’s second-highest court, is they should be treated as income to the children, not as subsidies to the parents, and that they do not fully offset the need for child support. Thus the NC Court of Appeals rejected a father’s argument that his court-ordered child support was set too high, noting a court in Arizona had ruled the same way in a similar case.