§ 19-6-53.Duties; powers; authorization to retain professional services

This section is the Georgia Child Support Commission’s job description. Subsection (a) lists 13 duties, subsection (b) lists six powers, and subsection (c) lets the commission hire outside help.

The duties center on the child support obligation table and guidelines. The commission must study how effective and efficient Georgia’s guidelines are and learn from other states that use guidelines. It must create a table consistent with § 19-6-15 and recommend it to the General Assembly, then determine periodically, and at least every four years, whether the table produces appropriate presumptive awards, and recommend whether and when the table or guidelines should change. It develops, publishes in print or electronically, and updates the table and the worksheets and schedules that go with it. It develops, or has someone develop, the software and calculator used with the table and guidelines, and it adjusts the formula for calculating a self-employed person’s income under applicable federal law if it finds that calculation affects people paying or receiving support in Georgia.

Other duties reach past the table. The commission develops training manuals and information to teach judges, attorneys and litigants how to use the table and guidelines, and it works with the Institute for Continuing Judicial Education, the Institute of Continuing Legal Education and other agencies on that training. It makes recommendations for proposed legislation. It studies the appellate courts’ acceptance of discretionary appeals in domestic relations cases and the development of case law in that area. It studies mediation, collaborative practice and pro se assistance programs as ways to reduce litigation in child support and custody cases. And it studies the impact of treating parenting time as a deviation from the presumptive amount of support, with recommendations on using the parenting time adjustment.

To do all this, the commission may evaluate any program or matter relating to child support in Georgia; request data from and review the records of appropriate agencies to the extent state and federal law allow; accept public or private grants, devises and bequests; enter into necessary contracts; set its own rules and procedures; and conduct studies, hold public meetings, collect data or take other action it deems necessary. It may also retain auditors, attorneys, financial consultants, child care experts, economists and other individuals or firms. Remember the limit in § 19-6-50: the commission’s recommendations don’t change the table without action by the General Assembly. The section was last amended in 2014.