Your child support is meant to cover all of the various expenses that come with raising a child. Does that mean that these payments from your ex can also help with your car insurance premiums? Our Morris County, NJ child support attorneys would argue that this is not a bad use of those funds.
Is Child Support Meant to Pay for Car Insurance?
Child support is meant to help with the expenses associated with raising children. If you are the custodial parent, it can cost a lot of money to ensure that your children have housing, food, and everything else that they need. These payments from your ex help with that.
Transportation is something that your children need as well. In most areas of the United States, that means that having a car is going to be a necessity. Your child support can be used to help you pay for any vehicle-related expenses. You need gas, you need repairs, and, as far as the state law is concerned, you need car insurance.
Can I Use My Payments for Car Insurance?
So yes, you can put your child support payments toward car insurance. You need a car to transport your children around and you need car insurance as a result. It would be hard to argue that this is a misuse of those funds.
However, you probably are not going to have a lot of luck if you ask for more child support because of car insurance costs. This is especially true if your high premiums are, let’s say, self-inflicted. If you have high insurance costs because you have gotten into accidents and behaved irresponsibly, don’t expect child support to make up the difference.
What Happens When Our Child Gets Their License?
Your car insurance premiums may stay pretty steady and predictable, but there’s one thing that’s sure to throw a wrench in your prepared budget eventually. Your teenager is going to get their license eventually, and that means that they need insurance.
Unfortunately, insuring a young driver is not cheap! Car insurance companies see them as risky to insure, so this is an expense that you and your ex should probably talk about. We recommend discussing matters like:
- Which policy or policies your teen driver is added to
- Whether they should have their own policy
- If you’ll make your teen driver pay part of their premiums
If you can come together and discuss this matter, that may be the best way to work out a deal without revisiting the entire child support agreement. When you cannot reach any kind of deal on your own, it may be time to see if an attorney can help.
Meet With Our Child Support Attorneys
If you have questions about your child support agreement or want to modify an existing deal that you have made with your former spouse, we may be able to help. Contact Townsend, Tomaio & Newmark to schedule an appointment with our team. We can tell you more about what our experienced family law attorneys can do for you.
