Arizona Child Support Calculator

How Arizona calculates child support

Arizona sets child support with the Income Shares Model, and we have read the guideline that says so, which means both parents' incomes are combined, and each parent covers the share of the total obligation that matches their share of that combined income. Here is what that looks like in practice.

The Income Shares Model starts from an estimate of what the children would have received had the household stayed intact, then splits that figure between the parents. The calculation runs in three steps. Both parents' monthly incomes are added together. A basic support obligation for that combined figure and that number of children is set by the state's own guideline. Each parent is then responsible for the percentage of the obligation that matches their percentage of the combined income.

Because the obligation is divided by income share rather than assigned to one side, the receiving parent's earnings matter as much as the paying parent's. A parent bringing in 70 percent of the combined income carries roughly 70 percent of the total obligation. The parent the children live with most is treated as already spending their share through daily care, so only the other parent's share is ordered as a payment. That is why closing the income gap between two parents lowers the payment even when neither parent's own income falls.

Four things are then layered on top of the base figure: health insurance premiums covering the children, work-related childcare, support already being paid under an earlier order for other children, and, in most states, the number of overnights each parent has.

The figure Arizona's own guideline works from is Combined Adjusted Child Support Income, under Arizona Child Support Guidelines Sections II.A.1 and II.C, adopted under A.R.S. § 25-320(D) and attached to Ariz. Sup. Ct. Admin. Order No. 2022-116.

What moves the number in Arizona

• Both parents' monthly incomes, and the gap between them
• Number of children covered by the order
• Parenting time, under a published table this page prints and does not apply, because the state counts days and this form asks for overnights
• Health insurance premiums covering the children
• Work-related childcare paid for the children
• Support already ordered for children from another relationship

Income limits and judicial discretion

Arizona sets no cap on the income its guideline runs on, and what happens at the top of the schedule is unusual enough to be worth reading rather than skimming. The Schedule of Basic Support Obligation ends at $30,000 of Combined Adjusted Child Support Income, $360,000 a year, and Section III.A.1.c does not hand the amount above that to a judge. It says that "If no party requests consideration of a higher amount, the amount for Combined Adjusted Child Support Income of $30,000 is the Basic Child Support Obligation". So a family at $50,000 a month is being given the guideline's own answer rather than the nearest figure available, and it is the same answer at $30,000 and at three times that. What can move it is the second half of the same subparagraph: on a party's request, the court decides whether the evidence shows a higher amount is in the child's best interests, weighing "the child's needs in excess of the presumptive amount" and any significant disparity between the parents' shares of income. That runs upward only and it turns on evidence about a particular child, so it is not a floor a court routinely adds to and it is certainly not a limit. Two things to check before comparing this figure with another state's. It is COMBINED income rather than one parent's, so two earners can be over the line together. And it is a pre-tax figure: Arizona says in terms that Child Support Income is taken "before any deductions or withholdings" and that the effect of taxes is already inside the schedule, so it is directly comparable with what this page asks you for and not with the net-income ceilings Illinois, Washington, Florida and Pennsylvania publish. Arizona leaves judges comparatively little room on custody and parenting time, which makes the support figure more predictable than in states where the schedule is set case by case. That is our own record rather than Arizona's own custody law.

Arizona child support examples

These three examples run through the same Arizona calculator on this page, so the figures match what the tool returns for the same entries. Each example changes one thing against the one before it, so you can see which lever moved the result. All three assume a standard schedule of 80 overnights a year with the paying parent, and the overnight count does not change any of them. Arizona's parenting-time adjustment is a published table, printed below, and it runs on a count of days rather than of overnights, so each figure here is the amount before it. The adjustment only ever subtracts, so treat these three as the top of the range rather than the middle of it.

Comparing the first two examples shows what a second child is worth in Arizona: the order moves from $683 to $1,014 a month on identical incomes. The third example raises the paying parent's earnings and adds health insurance and childcare, both of which this state credits against the obligation rather than adding on top of it.

How parenting time changes support in Arizona

Arizona adjusts support for parenting time under a published table, and this page prints the table without applying it. Section V.D of the guidelines sets the whole method out in one sentence: find the total number of parenting-time days in a year, look the total up in the Parenting Time Table, multiply the Basic Child Support Obligation by that band's percentage, and subtract the result from your proportionate share of the combined obligation. There is nothing discretionary in it and nothing missing from it. The reason your overnight count does not move the estimate above is narrower than that, and it is the whole of the reason: Arizona counts DAYS and this form asks you for OVERNIGHTS.

The table has 12 bands. Nothing at all below 20 days; 2.5 percent of the basic obligation from 20 to 34; and it climbs from there to 50 percent at 164 days or more, which is roughly an even split of the year. The full ladder is 0 to 19 days, 0 percent; 20 to 34 days, 2.5 percent; 35 to 49 days, 5 percent; 50 to 69 days, 7.5 percent; 70 to 84 days, 10 percent; 85 to 99 days, 15 percent; 100 to 114 days, 17.5 percent; 115 to 129 days, 20 percent; 130 to 142 days, 25 percent; 143 to 152 days, 32.5 percent; 153 to 163 days, 40 percent; 164 or more days, 50 percent.

Now the counting, because this is where the two units come apart. Section V.C counts one day for every 24 hours inside a block of parenting time, and then counts whatever is left over by the clock: 12 hours or more is another whole day, 6 to 11 hours is half a day, 3 to 5 hours is a quarter. None of that mentions a night, which is what makes it a different quantity from an overnight count rather than a rounder version of one. The guidelines work four real schedules through those rules. In 2 of them the day count and the overnight count come out the same. In one it comes out LOWER: a parent who collects the children at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday and returns them at 7:00 a.m. on Monday has 4 overnights and 3.5 Arizona days. In one it comes out HIGHER: a parent who has the children from noon on Saturday and returns the child at 9:00 p.m. on Sunday has 1 overnight and 1.5 days, because an afternoon with no night in it still counts.

So there is no direction to a substitution here, and that is why we will not make one. Treating your overnights as your days would push some readers' figures up and others' down, decided by how long each block of your schedule runs and whether any of it is daytime, and this form asks you neither. What there IS a direction to is the withholding itself: every percentage in the table is zero or more and Section V.D subtracts the product, so leaving the step out can only leave the figure above too HIGH, never too low. Read the estimate as the ceiling on what Arizona's worksheet produces for a parent with parenting time.

You can finish it in one line, which is why the table is here rather than a promise to publish one later. Count your parenting-time days for the year under the rules above, find your band, multiply the Basic Child Support Obligation shown in the calculator's breakdown by that percentage, and take the result off your proportionate share. Two things worth knowing while you do it. The count that matters is the one for the parent with LESS parenting time, which is how Section V.C words it. And the adjustment is subtracted from a share rather than from the final figure, so at a high day count it can take a parent past zero, which means it can change which of you pays rather than only how much. The estimate on this page cannot show you that, because the step it would come from is the one we are not running.

Where Arizona starts on parenting time

Arizona starts from a presumption of equal parenting time. That is our own record rather than Arizona's own custody law. Courts set the schedule on the best interests of the children, and once a schedule exists it feeds the support calculation through the parenting time table set out above. The overnight count is therefore worth negotiating deliberately, and there is a specific reason to do the counting carefully rather than approximately: Arizona converts a schedule into DAYS by the clock rather than into nights, so where the bands fall for you depends on how long each block runs and whether any of it is daytime. Take the table and your actual calendar to the count rather than a number of overnights. The provision our record names for that presumption is ARS 25-403.02.

Getting a child support order in Arizona

The guideline figure is only half the picture. When the order actually arrives, and what it costs to argue about it, vary quite a bit from state to state, and both shape what a family lives on in the meantime.

Residency required, in our record

3 months

Waiting period, in our record

2 months

Uncontested, our estimate

3 months

Contested, our estimate

one year

Support before the case is finished

Our record has 3 months of residency in Arizona before you can file, and a waiting period of 2 months that has to run before a judge can finalize the divorce. States measure that period from different starting points, some from filing, some from service on your spouse, and some from the date the two of you separated, so confirm where Arizona's clock begins. On our own estimates, a contested case in Arizona runs one year, against 3 months when the parents agree. That gap is why temporary support matters. A judge can enter a temporary order early in the case, calculated on the same guideline, so the children are covered while the rest of the case is worked out. If money is tight now, a temporary order is usually the fastest relief available, and waiting for the final judgment can mean months without support.

What it costs to contest the number

On our own figures, family law attorneys in Arizona run $250 to $450 an hour, and mediation costs roughly $250 a session. Worth doing the arithmetic before digging in: a handful of billable hours on each side can cost more than a full year of the amount being argued over. Where the disagreement is genuinely large, or where one parent's income is hard to pin down, representation earns its keep. Where the gap between the two positions is a few dozen dollars a month, mediation or a negotiated agreement almost always leaves both households better off. Our record carries collaborative divorce as available in all fifty states, so it says nothing specific about Arizona; whether trained collaborative attorneys practise near you is a local question. Where it is on offer, both parents commit in writing to settle without litigation and use shared financial experts rather than competing ones.

Changing or enforcing an Arizona order

Modifying an existing order

A child support order is not permanent, but it also does not adjust on its own. Either parent can ask the court to recalculate, and the general standard across states is a substantial and continuing change in circumstances since the last order. Job loss, a significant raise, a change in the parenting schedule, a new child support obligation for another child, and a change in the children's medical or childcare costs are the changes that most often qualify.

Two points catch parents out. The first is that a modification usually takes effect from the date the request is filed, not the date the circumstances changed, so waiting to file means absorbing the gap. The second is that the obligation continues in full until a judge signs a new order. An informal agreement between parents to pay less does not bind the court, and arrears can still accrue against the paying parent for the difference.

Enforcement

Enforcement runs through Arizona's child support agency as well as the courts. Federal law requires every state to run a child support enforcement program with a common set of tools, which is why the remedies look broadly similar from state to state: income withholding straight from wages, interception of federal and state tax refunds, reporting to credit bureaus, suspension of driver's and professional licenses, liens against property, and contempt proceedings for willful non-payment. Income withholding is the default for new orders in most cases rather than a penalty applied after a missed payment.

Arizona guideline authority and official worksheet

The Arizona child support guideline in our data is:

• Arizona Child Support Guidelines, Ariz. Sup. Ct. Admin. Order No. 2022-116 - read from an Internet Archive capture of the official file at azcourts.gov, on September 9, 2026.

That authority controls, and the worksheet published under it is the document a court works from. The estimate on this page models the guideline, it does not replace the worksheet.

Also in our data for Arizona, each with what it is and how we hold it:

• A.R.S. § 25-320 - named by the guidelines themselves as an authority they rest on; we hold no copy of it ourselves, so it is not named here as the text that controls.

Where to get the official worksheet

Every state publishes a child support worksheet or an official calculator, and that document is what a judge or the state agency works from. We do not yet have a verified direct link to Arizona's worksheet, so the starting points below are the state's own court site and the federal directory of state child support agencies rather than a deep link we cannot vouch for.

• Arizona courts , the state judiciary site from our Arizona source record.
• Office of Child Support Services, U.S. Administration for Children and Families, which maintains the directory of state child support agencies.
• National Conference of State Legislatures, child support guideline models by state, which publishes its own comparison of the guideline model each state uses, so you can check ours against it.

How we calculate this estimate

We apply the guideline model your state actually uses, and the models differ more than most summaries suggest. Most states follow the Income Shares Model: both parents' monthly incomes are combined, a basic support obligation is drawn from that combined figure and the number of children, and each parent covers the share that matches their portion of the combined income. Which income figure gets combined is the state's own to define and it is not the same one everywhere, so this page names it for your state where the guideline has been read and does not guess at it where it has not. Percentage of Income states apply a set rate to the paying parent's income alone, and Nevada's tiered version steps that rate down across income brackets. The Melson Formula reserves a self-support amount for each parent before dividing what is left. Some states do neither: North Dakota reads a dollar figure off a table keyed to one parent's net income, and California publishes a single algebraic formula with no schedule behind it. Which one your state is on is named on its own page rather than inferred from a list here. Credits for health insurance and childcare are applied where the state's own guideline builds them into the order, along with any income cap the state sets, and the list of what moves the number on each state's page names the levers that actually move that state's figure. Parenting time is computed in the states whose own guideline we have read and implemented, and in no others.

What the estimate assumes for Arizona

• Income figures are gross monthly, before taxes, counting the sources your state includes.
• Parenting time moves the figure only where we have read and implemented the state's own rule. The parenting-time section further down this page says which case this state is in, and where no adjustment applies the estimate is the amount before one. We previously reduced support past 146 overnights on a coefficient of our own. 146 turned out to be a single state's statutory threshold applied to all fifty, the size of the reduction had no legal source anywhere, and the mechanisms states actually use are not variations on one rule. Among the ones we have now read: a worksheet that switches at a threshold both parents must clear, an offset applied continuously with no trigger, a threshold that does nothing below it and slides above it, a term written into the guideline formula itself so there is no unadjusted amount at all, no parenting-time term anywhere, and a formula prescribed by statute that we have found and not transcribed. That list is what we have read rather than what exists, and it has grown with every state checked. We removed ours rather than defaulting it, and we publish each state's adjustment as that state's own rule is verified.
• North Carolina is one of the verified threshold cases, at 123 overnights under the guidelines adopted pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. 50-13.4(c1). The threshold has to be cleared by both parents, which is why a parent well past an even split can fall outside shared care entirely.
• Texas has no parenting-time adjustment at all, because its guideline has none. Tex. Fam. Code 154.125 runs on the obligor's net resources and the number of children, and the state's own calculator has no field for overnights. Possession time enters only as a discretionary deviation factor, Tex. Fam. Code 154.123(b)(4).
• Georgia has a mandatory parenting-time adjustment, and its formula is printed in SB 454 (2024), which was read here on October 5, 2026, and it is not transcribed or applied here. O.C.G.A. 19-6-15(g), effective January 1 2026, requires the court to adjust the noncustodial parent's basic obligation wherever there is a court-ordered parenting time schedule, with the result entered on Child Support Schedule C. Applying arithmetic of our own in place of a prescribed formula would be worse than applying none, and this calculator publishes no Georgia figure at all.
• Where this calculator computes from a state's own guideline, the basic obligation comes from that state's own schedule or equations. Everywhere else it gives no figure, and the source panel on that state's page says why. The national approximation it used to fall back on was measured against the eight transcribed schedules keyed to the same thing it is, at 624 income and family-size combinations. It missed them by 32 to 86 percent on average, and it missed them in both directions at once: at every income from $1,500 to $6,000 of combined monthly income it came in under at least one of those schedules and over another, then above all eight from $8,000 up, reaching 69 to 240 percent above those states' own tables at $30,000. So it was least reliable at a high combined income, where the dollars are largest, and landed closest near $6,000; that measurement is why no state's page shows it now.
• Where a state sets an income ceiling, we clamp income at it. That is a fair model of a real cap and a poor one of everything else. New York's $193,000 of combined parental income is the point above which a court may consider the additional income, not a limit on what it can order, and our figure there is the amount the guideline produces at the threshold. Modeling what a court adds above it is not something we can do honestly, because it turns on statutory factors rather than on arithmetic, so read the New York figure above that line as the low end of a realistic range, and not as a floor: no New York instrument says an award may not come in below the amount at the threshold.
• New Jersey's Appendix IX-F schedule ends at $3,600 of combined weekly net income, with courts instructed in capital letters not to extrapolate past it, and Appendix IX-A requires a court to add to the schedule figure from the income above that point. Below $180 of combined weekly net income it publishes no award figure at all. This calculator publishes no New Jersey figure, at any income.
• The result is a guideline number. Judges can deviate from it when the facts justify a different amount.

Where the estimate stops

Your state's official worksheet is the controlling document, and a court order can land somewhere other than any guideline estimate. Use this to prepare, then confirm the figure with a licensed family law attorney or your state's child support agency.

Read the full methodology for how every calculator on the site is built.

Sources

Arizona courts and statutes

Citations our record carries for Arizona. Being listed here does not mean a figure on this page was read from it.

• superiorcourt.maricopa.gov
• ARS 25-403.02
• Arizona Child Support Guidelines, Ariz. Sup. Ct. Admin. Order No. 2022-116
• A.R.S. § 25-320

Where to read more

Background reading. No number on this page is taken from any of these.

• National Conference of State Legislatures, child support guideline models by state
• Office of Child Support Services, U.S. Administration for Children and Families
• American Bar Association, Section of Family Law

About this page

Written by Barron Hansen

I am an app developer who is dedicated to building the highest-value, most accurate web apps possible, that people want to use every day.