When you and your spouse separated, you didn’t immediately think about requesting child support. You both have good jobs, and you’re able to support yourselves without either parent kicking in extra funds.
Before you decide to minimize child support, remember that it is support for your child, not necessarily for you. So, in many circumstances where the extra support is not needed immediately, parents choose to save those funds for their children. They can add them to a trust, savings account or save them in other ways, so their children have the money when they need it.
How can you save child support for your child’s future?
Here’s a good example of how you could use extraneous support. If you receive $300 a month for your child and don’t need that support, then you could place it into a savings account. If you do that over the course of five years, for example, then you could save an extra $18,000 for your child. That could be used toward college, their first vehicle, extracurricular activities or anything else that they need when the time comes.
When both parents share custody and how much you earn is fairly even, still consider having child support set aside for your child. The judge is unlikely to allow you to waive the support, so saving it for your child is a good way to invest it into their future. There are alternative ways to use that money, of course, but what you do will largely be based on your situation and the needs of your family moving into the future.
