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Release Notes for Version 10.03 Build 385.01, released
May 15, 2008
In this release we added a number of improvements, including: the
ability to specify expenses as “discretionary;” the ability to re-sort
assets; the ability to enter a growth rate on any expense; and the
ability to “reset” expenses lower or higher after a number of years
General Changes
Discretionary expenses. You may now mark an expense as entirely
discretionary, or enter the discretionary portion. The results will show
up on the Budget Report or the Child’s Budget Report. You will see
“actual” bottom line and the bottom line without discretionary expenses.
Also, on those reports, you now have the option to list discretionary
expenses separately.
User-entered growth rates on expenses and income. You may now
enter any growth rate you wish for any living expense or “non-wage
income” item. For example, you may now specify that property taxes and
health care costs will grow more quickly than inflation.
Ability to reset expense or wage base. For wages, expenses, and
non-wage income items, you may click a box to say, “override resets base
amount.” What this means is that if you override an individual year’s
calculated value for any of these, the overridden entry becomes the
basis for calculating future years’ amounts. For example, if food
expenses will decline from $200 per week to $100 per week ten years from
now, you may, in the tenth year, enter $100. The eleventh year will now
have $103 (assuming a 3% growth rate). If you override year 10 with
$100, and you do not choose this option, the eleventh year will still
have $200 adjusted for 11 years of growth.
Sorting asset and debt entries. Now you may change the sequence
in which assets or liabilities appear on your screen or reports. (Items
you may sort include investments, debts, IRAs, residences, pensions,
etc.). Just click the button or link to change the order of the assets.
Exhibit Id’s are now available on the Total Property Division report
and the Property Statement reports, as well as on the Marital Property
Division reports. (An Exhibit Id lets you link the line items on a
property report with appraisals, account statements, etc., that you are
maintaining outside the software.) You have two options with respect to
Exhibit Ids: 1. You may generate new Exhibit Id’s each time the report
is printed. (This is the current approach.) 2. You may keep the Exhibit
Id attached to the assets to which they are assigned currently, and have
newly-entered assets take the next consecutive number Exhibit Id. The
second option may result in Exhibit Ids being in a different order than
assets when the report is printed.
Improved computations for IRA liquidation distributions. We have
made the calculation of estimated incremental tax on IRA liquidation
distributions more accurate.
Expense labels. We now allow longer (40 character) expense
labels. When you override labels for both parties’ expenses, we now
output both parties’ labels.
Default folder. You may now set a default folder which will be
used for all new files. This is on the Home tab > System Info screen. If
you do not do that, the system remembers the last-used folder.
Turn off auto-save. You may now turn off auto-save. What this
means is that the software will not automatically save your data. The
reason one might do this is that one can “play” with numbers, but not
commit them to be “actual,” until the user chooses to save the file.
Accumulated Savings. We clarified that we now have five
components of total return on accumulated savings: interest, dividends,
capital gains, tax free, and appreciation.
Notes on Reports. You may now add multi-line notes at the top and
bottom of many key reports. This lets you annotate these reports as much
as you wish.
Date and time stamp on files. We add "last saved" date and time
to each file on your recent file list
Poverty Guideline. We made the annual update to poverty guideline
numbers for various states’ child support guidelines.
Social Security Income. On the Lawyer tab Income & Expense page,
we made Social Security income a field that could be entered on a
weekly, monthly, or annual basis.
What-If Payer and Payee. We added the names of the actual alimony
and support payer and payee on the “What If Analysis” and “Alimony
Calculator” screens.
Lawyer tab Income & Expense. We added more fields to the Income &
Expense lines for income and expenses from assets (e.g., the Mortgage
Expense lines).
Property Settlements on Budget Report. We added the income and
expense of Property Settlements to the Budget Report.
Confirm for AutoUpdate check. Checking for updates can take a
long time if the person is not connected, or if the connection is not
working. Before we check for updates, at startup, we now pop up a
message, asking, "Would you like to check for updates?"
State-Specific Changes
California spousal support. We added a field to specify the
California county on the Planner tab Spousal Support screen.
Connecticut child support. We added the modification of the child
care contribution for low-income obligors, to limit the contribution to
20%. We included child support on account of previous relationships as
income for child support purposes. We added “hours worked” to the Quick
Child Support screen. We added social security dependency benefits to
the Income & Expense page, and made it part of income for child support
guideline purposes.
Connecticut Affidavit. On the Connecticut Affidavit, there is now
an option to show asset values at 100% but equity (right hand column) at
50% of value. We now fill the “other” lines on the Affidavit with
individual other expenses, and only attach an addendum if there are too
many “other” lines. If the Federal Tax is overridden on the Quick Child
support calculator, we now use the overridden amount on the Affidavit.
The entry for local tax now carries automatically to the Affidavit.
New York child support. We added a health insurance worksheet to
the Quick Child Support screen.
New York Net Worth Statement. We made many small layout
improvements. We added an “other” line to allow multiple user entries to
“(n) Miscellaneous.”
Pennsylvania. We added an extra text line on the Inventory &
Appraisement report.
Fixes
If all Cash & Investments had no value, they were not displayed in the
property division report. Now they are displayed.
On the Alimony Calculator, the name of the alimony payee was not always
updating when the alimony payer changed. That is now fixed.
If you overrode the calculated child support amount, and then restored
the calculated value, we were not correctly resetting the values. We are
now doing that.
If you entered an outside-valuation pension value, then specified a lump
sum distribution, we were continuing the value (on the Net Worth
Spreadsheet) after the lump sum distribution. This has been fixed.
New York City tax was not showing up on the Budget Report, but now it
is. Alimony calculator. The option to show cash for living
expenses "Un-Allocated" was not working if the child support amount had
been overridden. This has been fixed.
Sale of Residence. If you had X'd the box to deduct anticipated
costs from marital equity, this was affecting total equity and each
party's share for tax purposes. It should not do so, and it no longer
does.
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