Click on a question to see the answer.
Question: What if my client's gender is neither male nor female?
Answer: Here is the reason we ask for the parties' gender:
1. A few states still have headings on their child support guidelines of "mother" and "father."
2. The pension mortality tables are male and female.
If there is a defined benefit pension, you should pick whichever gender you think will more closely match the mortality table.
Unfortunately, we cannot give any further guidance on this. We just don`t know which would tend to be more accurate.
You would have to know why women tend to live longer than men, and then where your client stands with respect to those key factors.
If the child support form is not gender specific and there is no defined benefit pension, then it does not matter which gender you enter, and you may tell your client that.
The software is programmed not to allow you to leave it blank, however, because the calculations require that some value be entered.