Seattle, Kirkland, and Bellevue child support attorneys practice primarily in King County Superior Court. Child support is an issue that arises in several types of law suits. Under Washington State family law, child support must be addressed in any divorce, paternity, or legal separation action in which there are children at issue. Furthermore, Bellevue child support lawyers analyze child support for support and parenting plan modifications. Moreover, a Bellevue child support attorney will defend litigants who have been served with actions for support, as the process of setting income is sometimes not straightforward. Because child support arises under a variety of conditions, competent a Bellevue child support lawyer must be familiar with a variety of courts and the process for filing a variety of actions.

In Washington State, Bellevue child support attorneys calculate child support based ostensibly on the income of both parents. However, our child support statutes provide wide discretion to the court to consider factors such as wealth, debt, income from business earnings, and others when determining how much one parent should transfer to the other. When the court bases its decision on something other than the net income of the parties, it must enter written findings as to why. A Bellevue child support attorney will frequently encounter cases in which income is either difficult to establish or where one parent is voluntarily unemployed. In the latter cases, the court must impute income that the party in question should earn, depending upon the circumstances. The process for imputation is something Bellevue child support lawyers need to understand so the court does not enter findings unfairly.

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