Real Estate Resources and Indiana Divorce - New Resources on Blog

We have added some helpful real estate resources for individuals going through or contemplating divorce.

Want to know what your county assessor thinks your house is worth? Check out the links to Marion County and Hamilton County assessors search pages, see the Resources section on the left-hand side of the blog. This resource will also tell you whose name the title of the house is recorded under since ownership history is provided. I should say that a county assessor's estimate of value may or may not be similar to the true fair market value of your property.

Also, we added a search box for recent home sales information, as well as a link to the MIBOR site, the best place to start if you want to do an online search for a new home. Again, these are on the left-hand side of the blog.

Indiana Child Support Guidelines - High Earners Pay More, Low Earners Pay Less

Under the amended Indiana Child Support Guidelines, effective January 1, 2010, high earners may pay more, and low earners may pay less.

High Earners: Those that earn over $4000 a week will be affected. Under the previous guidelines those earning $4000 did not have a scheduled guideline amount, but instead a formula was applied. Now where income is at $4000-$10,000 weekly there is a scheduled guideline payment. The initial commentary of the amended Guidelines states as follows:

[the scheduled payments] at high incomes leveled off the child support schedule for combined weekly adjusted incomes above $4,000. In 2009 this exception was removed. The increase is now incorporated into the schedule up to combined weekly adjusted incomes of $10,000 and a formula is provided for incomes above that amount. Previously, a formula was provided for combined weekly adjusted incomes above $4,000.

One aspect of the guidelines that did not change is the ability to tax adjust the support payment from the guideline assumed income tax rate of 21.88%. The guidelines state as follows:

In devising the Indiana Guidelines, an average tax factor of 21.88 percent was used to adjust the support column. Of course, taxes vary for different individuals. This is the case whether a gross or net income approach is used. Under the Indiana Guideline, where taxes vary significantly from the assumed rate of 21.88 percent, a trial court may choose to deviate from the guideline amount where the variance is substantiated by evidence at the support hearing.

For high earners a tax adjustment should still be considered.

Low Earners: The changes to the guidelines are helpful to low earners. Instead of having a minimum support amount of $25.00 per week the lowest amount is set at $12.00 per week. Also, the Supreme Court states that there are some situations where a $0.00 support order is appropriate. While this may seem unfair the Supreme Court found, based on research, that the accumulation of excessive arrearages was not in the best interest of the children involved. Also, where a parent is incarcerated and can't earn income, an adjustment to the support amount may be needed, see case here.

Additionally, considering that 'negative support orders' are now presumed to be appropriate, it is not much of a stretch to have a $0.00 support order.

For more information on child support and the new guidelines see previous blog entries on 'child support'.

Indiana Divorce & Online Divorce Forms : Limited Scope Representation

More and more online do-it-yourself ("DIY") divorce resources are sprouting up everyday. Some of the popular and well-known companies are Legalzoom and Divorcewriter. Even our Indiana Supreme Court has published an online DIY form program (very user friendly) for people who, for economic or personal reasons, do not want to go the traditional route of hiring attorneys to handle their case.

Also, consider that online legal research resources are much improved and for many uses, free. See Google Scholar as an example.

With these online form services, and the availability of better online research resources, will need for a divorce attorney be obsolete? Not quite.

The online resources and DIY divorce kits are best suited for parties who have simple marital estates and agree on everything, but, even then while the forms can cause the marriage to be dissolved they cannot provide legal advice. The legal advice is crucial for most people. There are good reasons why attorneys say that a man who represents himself will have a fool for a client.

Example: About once a month our office gets a call from someone who "thinks there was a mistake" because his name (usually a he) was left on the mortgage when he "signed the quitclaim deed." There is a long pause after we explain that a quitclaim deed has nothing to do with the mortgage. There was no mistake. The form, which was coverted into a binding court order with the judge's signature, clearly left him obligated on the mortgage for an indefinite amount of time, while his ex-wife continues to live there. Oh yeah, and the real rub is that by giving her the quitclaim deed he gave her his half of the equity in home. A second long pause and, I suspect, nausea. The mistake was his - he thought the quitclaim deed relieved his obligation on the mortgage.

Any attorney would have been helpful in the above scenario, and an attorney's advice is still possible when using legal forms. In lawyer-speak we call this unbundling legal services, or limited-scope representation. All this really means is that an attorney can be hired to help with only part of the case, or, in this example, to review and provide feedback to the divorce settlement agreement.

If you or someone you know are considering using online forms, also consider getting an attorney to review the forms and provide feedback.

For more on unbundling legal services see Sam Hasler's blog posting, or a posting by the Indiana Law Blog regarding limited-scope representation.