. . . child support starts when a child is close to graduation, the Virginia Court of Appeals says in Saxon v. LeSueur (Va. Ct. App. unpublished 12/17/2013). It recognized "unique expenses associated with their son’s activities during his last year of high school" averaging about $500 per month. It explains that the statutory child support guidelines formula:
addresses “the obvious fact that child raising expenses increase as the child grows older.” It may seem odd to presuppose the cost of rearing an infant to be about the same as a high-school senior. But it makes sense if one assumes, as we do, that “parents’ incomes generally rise as children age,” and thus “the increased cost of rearing older children will be accounted for in the income shares formula” adopted by the statute. ... In cases in which the child-support award begins when the child is quite young and continues to the age of majority, the cost disparities balance out over the years of the award. The overestimate in the early years roughly cancels out the underestimate in the latter years.
But in cases in which the child-support award begins and ends during the year or two before the child turns eighteen, as is the case here, the cost-averaging assumption may be inequitable.