The ability to claim head of household instead of married filingseparate or even filing single can be incredibly important toyour overall tax scheme. You can claim head of household if youhave your children for more than 50% of the time. Thus, a headof household tax filing should be a part of the overallnegiating outline in a divorce or separation situation. A childcustody agreement that is silent on this issue is really not awell negotiated or written agreement.

Your child custody agreement can address this issue in a numberof ways. If your child custody agreement provides for jointshared custody, it must state who has the children for 50% ofthe time. If you have two children, you can divide that up sothat each parent has the possibility of fiing for head ofhousehold. If you simply have joint custody and one parent hasresidential custody, you can still provide a head of householddeduction to the other parent by wording the agreement in a waythat allows for that filing.

There are other tax benefits available to parents that have tobe considered when negotiating a child custody agreement. Manyor most of those tax benefits are variable depending upon yourincome level ad whether or not you can claim the child orchildren as deductions. If you are really thinking through yourchild custody agreement, you will negotiate all of thesebenefits. The objective should be to maximize all availablebenefits for both parties, thereby providing an overall highlyadvantageous tax impact for your child custody agreement.

About the author:

Attorney Jean Mahserjian is the author of numerous websites andbooks devoted to helping consumers through the process ofseparation and divorce. To download free excerpts from herfamily law books, visit: http://www.millenniumdivorce.com