How should you handle parents who are divorced or separated when it comes to providing receipts?

As a good practice, we advocate our child care providers issue receipts whenever they are paid.  Do you have to do this?  No, it just makes your record keeping easier.

The question here is when you have a child in your care, whose parents are separated or divorced, which parent do you give the receipt to?  The short answer : you only give a receipt to the person who actually paid you. Make it one of your business rules, and let parents know (and include in your program materials).

But what do you do if you find yourself in a situation where one of the parents comes to you and says they have been paying the other parent for your child care services… and they need the receipt to declare it.  Advise the parent that they will have to speak to the other parent because you only issue receipts to someone who has directly paid you and they will have to speak to the other parent if they are planning to claim a child care tax credit.

What happens if both parents, separated or divorced, have paid you.  If you have kept a register of who paid when, then add it up and give each parent a receipt for the amount they paid.  If you didn’t keep it separate, then, according to Tom Copeland, “give each of them the same receipt and mark “Duplicate” on each receipt”.

For more information about on this read Child and Dependent Care Expenses,