Who Supports Child?

[Burke]

Child is 16.
Receives Social Security.
Receives income from Trust left by grandparent.
Has small part-time job.

QC says "Child cannot have provided more than 1/2 of own support."
These three amounted to over $25K last year. Is it considered provided by the child?

[BP.]

Is it considered provided by the child?

TTB 3-20. I think it would depend on whether the income items were actually used for support.

[taxea]

I agree with BP. The child is not required to spend any income on support...if it is in doubt then a support worksheet should be done,

[Burke]

I know at least $20K was for support items. I can't swear to the SS, but I would be very surprised if it all was put into savings or anything like that. TTB 3-20 verifies that SS would be considered child's funds. Child uses the part-time job for spending $$$.

[Koss]

Support

I agree that not all of the child's income is necessarily considered support. But to the extent that the income you describe was in fact used for support, I think all three sources of income would be considered to be support provided by the child. The only questionable one is the money flowing from the trust.

"Spending money" for a 16-year old usually means things like gasoline, designer clothing, movies, music, electronics, and other "toys" that we don't think of as necessary, i.e., they are not food, basic clothing, housing or medical care. But these things are still part of the child's support. When a parent buys a kid an iPod, or tickets to a movie, that's support. If the kid buys that stuff with his own money, it's still support, but now it's provided by the child.

BMK

[Koss]

Support

Geez, with that kind of money, the kid might be supporting someone else.

Is he spending a lot of money on a girlfriend?

BMK