Support Release Notes...

Release notes for version 12.03, July 13th, 2010

This release has many changes and enhancements, especially to state child support and affidavits.
______________________________________________________________________
In General:

Observations button. Explains things about the case situation that are not obvious but may be important, or that respond to questions that are frequently asked in this situation.

What If Analysis. It is now possible to view and print up to 12 What If scenarios, both for What If Analysis and for the Alimony Calculator.

Defined benefit pensions. Added the ability to specify multiple tiers of interest rates for defined benefit pensions. Also, we change the display of each year's calculation in the pension audit trail. Each year now shows the present value of $1.00 paid in that year, not the cumulative present value as it did previously. We hope that this is more clear.

User Guide. Revised and updated the User Guide.

Help texts. Added help texts on several screens.

E-mail settings dialog. Reworked the layout and text, to clarify how to change your e-mail settings.

Social Security. Now if you click “no,” to the question about current income, it zeros out the number that was there. Also, fixed a rare problem with Social Security numbers not carrying to the Budget Report.

State Taxes Report. Clarified state tax report to more clearly indicate which federal line (gross, AGI, or taxable income) was the federal reference income.

Real Estate. Clarified that prior mortgage monthly payment is “NOT Balance.” Also, clarified “Statement Method” vs. “Detail Method.”

Alimony per month. We now check that it starts in the current year before using it in the monthly Budget Report.

Allow IRA to start at age 71. Previously was age 70. But 70 ½ can fall in the same calendar year as he turns 71.

Wages in What-If Analysis. What-If Analysis now includes the ability to change Wages.

Marital & Separate Zero Value Assets. We now show lines on Marital and Separate Property report for zero value assets.

Real Estate. Now you may designate that expense of sale can be paid in a different percentage than ownership percentage.

Real Estate. We now support the rule with respect to sales of principal residence, which reduces the exclusion for time during which the residence was rented after 2009.

What if analysis. Now includes percentages of gross income represented by child support, spousal support, and combined. Also, I’ve modified the expanded worksheet to show these percentages only for the payer, not for the recipient

What if analysis. New option to have child support and spousal support values update with actual values whenever the actual values change.

Alimony Calculator, Expanded report. New line: Child support as percent of net income before payments.

Pension calculator. We are now calculating the monthly pension benefit being received by each party without rounding the coverture fraction (that is, with improved precision).

Calculators tab. Added a warning that the data entered there does not integrate with the Planner or Lawyer tab.

Alimony after-tax was comparing federal taxes only. Now we are comparing federal and state taxes.

What If Analysis. If “Copy from Actuals” is selected, the calculated support value is used even if the box to use the calculated support value is cleared, if actual child support is zero.

Pension Report. The Pension report now includes the income stream from pensions entered without assets (on the Non-Wage Income screen).

State Taxes. Clarified that state taxes are estimated, not calculated with the same precision as federal tax.
______________________________________________________________________
State tax revisions:

Arkansas: Brackets indexed for inflation.

California: In tax computation for child support, added new Mental Health Services tax, which is an effective top tax rate of an additional 1% for incomes over $1,000,000. For the actual tax, we now apply this to $1,000,000 on a joint return. (Previously, it had been applied only to a threshold of $2,000,000 on a joint return.) Brackets indexed for *negative* inflation – tax at a given level of income is actually higher than the previous year.

Connecticut: Added new top rate of 6.5% for high-income taxpayers $500,000 (single) or $1,000,000 (joint)

New York. Added new top rates of 7.85% and 8.97% for tax on taxable incomes over $200,000 and $500,000 (for single taxpayers) and $300,000 and $500,000 (joint) and $250,000 and $500,000 (head of household).

Hawaii: Added three new tax brackets for high-income taxpayers, a 9%, 10%, and 11% bracket. These take effect for single taxpayers at $150,000, $175,000, and $200,000. For joint taxpayers, it is $300,000, $350,000, and $400,000.

Illinois state tax: Added Illinois Property Tax Credit and Illinois EIC Tax credit/

Indiana: Changed benefit for dependent exemption to $1,500.

Iowa state tax: added the deduction for federal income tax net of self-employment tax.

Kansas: Changing the federal reference income to AGI and entered exemption of $2,250.

Louisiana: Changed the federal reference income to be taxable income. (Was AGI.)

Minnesota: Updated brackets for inflation.

Montana: Updated brackets for inflation.

North Dakota: Changed tax rates, and updated brackets for inflation.

Ohio: Implemented delay of tax reductions. Changed rates.

Oregon: Updated tax tables and added two new brackets, 10.8% for incomes over $125,000 (single) or $250,000 (joint), and 11% for incomes over $250,000 (single) or $500,000 (joint).

Rhode Island: Updated brackets for inflation.

Vermont: Updated brackets for inflation, and tax rates decreased slightly in 2010.

Wisconsin: Added new top bracket of 7.75% for incomes over $221,660 (single) and $295,550 (joint), and indexed for inflation. Tax brackets are lower than 2009.

______________________________________________________________________
Connecticut Support and Affidavit:

New Flexible Affidavit. Allows easy, straightforward entry of all the information needed for the affidavit, then prints it in a format unconstrained by the traditional one-page format. Easy to add income, payroll deductions, other income, assets, expenses, and liabilities.

Child Support. Now, we show the mortgage interest calculated amount right on the worksheet.

Child Support. Added “child support of prior relationship” as a deduction line.

______________________________________________________________________
Florida Support and Affidavit:

Child Support: Now, we show the mortgage interest calculated amount right on the worksheet.

______________________________________________________________________
Illinois Support and Disclosure:

Child Support: Now, we show the mortgage interest calculated amount right on the worksheet.

Disclosure statement. We have an additional entry for the "dissolution" date, and we now use the now use the "dissolution" date rather than the "separation" date, where appropriate.

______________________________________________________________________
New Jersey Support and Case Information Statement:

Child Support. Added a link to View/Edit Taxes from the tax summary screen.

Child Support. Clarified the teenage adjustment, adding an X box that indicates if there is a teenage adjustment, and the amount.

Child Support. On the Circular E tax calculation, added lines for FICA, Medicare and Self employment taxes. Also, changed line 1 from “Wages” to “Taxable income excluding social security.”

Case information statement. Many small changes to text, spacing, layout, etc. to make the Case Information Statement more straightforward and easy to use. This is especially true of real estate mortgages, the entry of which now more closely mirrors that of the paper form. We also added an option not to print a mortgage when the Case Information Statement is printed.

CIS. Income screen. Texts to clarify what to do on this screen.


Complementary Dispute Resolution Alternatives form. It added an alternative text version of this form.

______________________________________________________________________
New York Support and Net Worth Statement.

First draft of new Maintenance guidelines.

Child Support. New section on health insurance worksheet to show calculation of CSSA adjustment responsibility for out-of-pocket health insurance.

Child Support. Fixed error relating to calculation of health care expenses for child support. We were netting parents’ expenditures, when we should have been allocating responsibility proportionally to income.

______________________________________________________________________
Nevada Child Support:

Child support. Updated child support tables.

______________________________________________________________________
Pennsylvania Child Support and Inventory:

Child support. You can now do split custody, and shared custody within split custody situations. That is, if there are three children, two children could be purely with mom and the other child could be primarily with dad, but with mom having shared custody. In each case, the software will automatically complete a full guideline worksheet with each parent as custodial parent for the children primarily residing with that parent, and the software will automatically offset the two results.

Child Support. Add Worksheet for unreimbursed medical expenses to Adjustments page.

Child Support. Added a link to View/Edit Taxes from the tax summary screen.

Child support. Improved the handling of tuition and camps.

Child Support. Now, we show the mortgage interest calculated amount right on the worksheet.

Child support. When child support was entered, the tax calculation did not update until another entry was made. This has been fixed.

Child support. For low-income obligors (income in gray shaded region), we now ignore the percent of combined income and use the basic support amount based solely on the obligor’s income as the calculated support amount.

Child support. Two more special case entries on the Summary screen: Low-income obligor (obligor’s income is in gray shaded region), and Very-low income obligor (support reduced to keep obligor’s income above self-support reserve).

Child support. Increased precision on percentage share to two decimals.

Child support. In Pennsylvania, for child support purposes, we now include alimony received from or paid to a prior relationship in the PASCES tax calculation. There is now a checkbox to include alimony of the current relationship as well, which applies both to the PASCES tax calculation, as well as our actual 1040 tax calculation.

Local taxes. In Pennsylvania, local taxes will now default to 1%.

Inventory. Numerous enhancements including:
    - ability to enter "plaintiff" and "defendant" (enter on the Background Info screen).
    - added a second description line for each asset.
    - added totals for "marital equity" and "marital debt."


______________________________________________________________________
Bugs fixed:

Updates were causing KeyCode to be lost. That should be fixed with releases after this one.

Massachusetts child support. We were not calculating the earned income credit correctly in this case. That has been fixed.

For New Jersey child support, the software was not allowing an entry in the new spouse income field. That has been fixed.

In Connecticut, the "investment income" section was not working for the second party. That has been fixed.

IRA required minimum distribution is now based on balance at the end of the prior year, as it should be. We had been basing it on balance in the current year after other distributions.

Fix to sale of residence percent, to NOT count expenses when calculating % of equity.

Fix to Accumulated savings, was not allowing other assets to be liquidated to cover net loss on sale of real estate.

For children’s assets, show on Marital Property Division Report if any X’d, not just if value of children’s assets is greater than zero.

If you used an outside valuation firm to value a pension and also specified a lump sum distribution, we were not cutting off the value of the pension asset after the distribution. This was making the net worth after the distribution double-count the pension. That has been fixed.

If you had X’d the box saying “use what if” alimony on Alimony PV, we were not updating actual alimony PV.

Pensions entered without assets, if X’d as “non-tax,” were still being taxed. That has been fixed.

Back to "About This Release" Page