Massachusetts' New Child Support Guidelines
The new modified Massachusetts Child Support Guidelines (see the Task Force Report and new Guidelines) became effective January 1st but not without the controversy that normally trails such changes. Massachusetts' divorced (and otherwise separated) fathers have hounded the promulgators of child support guidelines for almost as long as they've been around and several years ago succeeded in advocating for less financially imposing obligations on non-custodial parents. The ever-active Dr. Ned Holstein of "Father's and Families" was on the most recent task force in 2008 that worked on revamping the Guidelines and he ended up issuing a dissent in an interesting Minority Report in which he was partially joined by two other of the 12 task force members. The Task Force was chaired by Paula M. Carey, Chief Justice of the Probate and Family Court. Then, earlier this month, Fathers and Families made a federal case out of their objection - filing for injunctive relief at the Federal District Court in Boston. However, on January 5th, Judge Woodlock decided that his court shouldn't be addressing a state regulation, so look for the matter to be filed in state court in the near future. For now, the new Guidelines rule. I have fielded questions about whether the new guidelines apply in as yet undecided cases when the cases were filed before January 1st. The short answer is that, yes, they do. However, I believe that one can reasonably argue that if there is to be an order for retroactive child support (going back to a point before January 1st) that at least for the pre-January 1st period, the old guidelines should apply.
