One of the great mysteries of child custody is the way that the amount of money paid from one parent to another is calculated. Sometimes the amount of money involved seems to be too little help and other times it seems far more than is needed. A lot of that perception depends on what side of the equation you are on.

For years child support payments were set individually by judges. This led to a great discrepancy in the amounts of money paid from one parent to another without any rhyme or reason. Then Federal government required the amount of child support payments needed to be aligned to a guideline amount.

Guideline systems were setup by each state (in compliance with Federal standards) and an objective means of establishing support was created (California established their current guidelines in July 1992). This led to the language you see on court documents using the term “Guideline Support”.

Depending on which side of the support equation you are on, obligor (payer) or obligee (payee), often times sets the stage for how you feel about support. It isn’t uncommon to hear someone complain that they are paying $700/month in child support and that the child doesn’t eat and wear enough in a month to warrant paying $700/ month. The complaint often includes claims of paying the bills of the other parent rather than expenses related to the child. Well guess what, they’re right. Child support isn’t based on exact expenses. Child support is based on a principle of improving the child’s quality of life.

Child support is about improving the quality of life of a child, not paying exact expenses. To that extent, there is a redistribution of income. Now let’s look at how the decision to redistribute income is made.

The equation for each state is different but the super simplified items in the equation are:

The amount of disposable income of each parent The percentage of time child spends with each parent

Disposable income is money left after paying insurance, rent, other child support, etc. Be aware, that some of these items count very little and some count fully. How much each parent makes is a major factor, the bigger the difference the bigger the support amount.  The percentage of time is a HUGE factor. The farther you get from 50/50 the more the amount swings. Let’s look at a couple of examples.

If one parent makes 2 times (2x) what the other parent makes and the visitation is 50/50, the parent making 2x can expect to pay some money. If the same parent making 2x has 95% custody, then the parent making less will be paying more than they expect. Finally if the parent making 2x has just 5% visitation, they can expect a significant amount of child support.

To reference the laws in your state you can reference http://www.supportguidelines.com/links.html as a resource for the actual state law codes. There are software packages that you can plug numbers into and have it calculate your specific numbers. You will need to do your own research to find them.

Now that you know something about how child support is calculated I hope that you will spread the word about WHY child support is calculated the way it is.