Dallas County · Board Certified in Family Law
Highland Park Child Support Lawyer
Child support in Texas starts as arithmetic and turns into an argument about one number: what counts as your net resources.
Child Support for Highland Park Families
Highland Park is one of the highest-net-worth communities in Texas, where marital estates routinely involve trusts, closely held businesses and separate-property claims. For child support purposes that matters in a specific way: a Highland Park case is filed in Dallas County, heard by Dallas County judges, and governed by Dallas County's local rules and standing orders.
The courthouse is at George L. Allen Sr. Courts Building, 600 Commerce St., Dallas, TX 75202. Families here are usually served by Highland Park ISD, which is the practical anchor for school-calendar questions in a possession schedule — exchanges, spring break, and the start and end of the summer period all key off the district calendar rather than a generic date.
Support in Highland Park runs on the same guidelines as the rest of Texas (Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125), but the arguments here have a local flavour. In a community where household wealth commonly sits in trusts and closely held businesses, a meaningful share of income arrives as bonus, commission or equity rather than as salary — and net resources reaches all of it.
That turns a routine calculation into a question of what a year looks like. Annualizing a strong quarter overstates it; using base pay alone understates it. Dallas County courts see the pattern often enough that a well-documented look-back is usually more persuasive than an argument about the number in isolation.
Filing in Dallas County. Texas requires that one spouse have lived in the county of filing for the 90 days before the petition (Tex. Fam. Code § 6.301), on top of six months' residency in the state. A recent move between Dallas County and a neighbouring county can reset that 90-day clock even though nothing about the marriage changed.
How the guideline calculation works
Texas applies percentage guidelines to the paying parent's monthly net resources (Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125). The percentages step up with the number of children before the court, with adjustments when the obligor also supports children in another household.
The guidelines apply up to a cap on net resources — and that cap is not written into the statute. It is set and periodically republished by the Texas Attorney General (Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125), which is why any figure you read on a website may already be stale. Above the cap, a court can order more, but the parent asking for it has to show the proven needs of the child.
Self-employment and variable pay
When the paying parent is an owner, a contractor or a commissioned salesperson, the calculation stops being clerical. Business income is gross receipts less the ordinary and necessary expenses of producing that income — and the tax definition of an ordinary and necessary expense is broader than the family-law one. A vehicle, a phone, a home office and travel that a return treats as fully deductible may be added back in whole or in part.
Bonuses, commissions, restricted stock and irregular overtime raise a different problem: what number represents a year. Courts commonly look back over a period rather than annualizing a good quarter or a bad one.
Who Handles These Cases
Lisa G. Garza is Board Certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and has practiced Texas family law for more than 30 years. The firm represents Highland Park families from offices on the Dallas North Tollway and in McKinney, and appears in Dallas County.