Let’s talk about ChildView

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What started as an in-house project in 1996 to address the calculation requirements of the proposed federal Child Support Guidelines and assist with the family law litigation support work of ChildView’s founder, Barry Gardiner, FCA, CFP (retired), quickly grew into a commercial venture in 1997. As numerous provincial and territorial governments, along with members of the family law bar across Canada, looked for software solutions to address these new child support calculations, the ChildView team was ideally suited to fill this need. 

From this foundation, the ChildView software was created. When the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines were introduced, these calculations were integrated into the capabilities of the software and provided an enhancement to the original ChildView spousal support analytical tool.

With the strong accounting and tax background of the ChildView developers, a very different perspective is provided by the ChildView software. It bridges the knowledge gap between the Child Support Guidelines theory and the actual number crunching.  The correct calculations require that the underlying, complex income tax and benefits requirements be addressed and the ChildView software, along with the extensive support that is offered, does just that. 

Family situations and break-downs continue to be complex, regardless of the veneer of simplicity presented by the Child Support Guidelines. Once child support was no longer taxable or tax deductible, parties quickly discovered that there were still significant tax implications to the orders and agreements that were being drafted. For example, payors of child support soon learned that they would not be able to claim the significant tax credit for a child if orders or agreements were not carefully structured to address the complex tax rules. While other software may default to including such claims in the calculations, ChildView instead chooses to guide users through the decisions with straight-forward questions on a criteria screen, allowing them to tailor-make the calculations to the specific scenario.

Along with ChildView’s ability to bridge the knowledge gap with its program design, significant added value is found in ChildView’s detailed explanation of each party’s cash positions after factoring in the child and/or spousal support obligations, since it is the money that matters to most people. This detail is further enhanced by the transparency in the tax and benefit calculations, as differences in results are often driven by differences in the assumptions going into the calculations.

For example, in a particular scenario, one side assumes that the child support recipient is single and calculates section 7 child support on that basis. The opposing counsel knows that the recipient has re-partnered, which completely changes the tax and benefit effects in the calculation and the resulting child support amount. These types of differences are easily identified with the ChildView software so that an agreement on the correct assumptions may be made, rather than fruitless arguing over the end results.

ChildView also offers unlimited, toll-free support that covers far more than installation help. It addresses everything from a basic walk through of the data input for first time users to complex discussions on the determination and treatment of income for a non-resident payor. Once a user has called with a difficult issue, ChildView becomes their first source for answers because they discover that ChildView often has the resources and ability to help them solve their issue.