California Child Support Calculator

How California calculates child support

California sets child support with the Statewide Uniform Guideline Formula, and we have read the guideline that says so, which means one published algebraic formula sets the amount from both parents' net incomes and the share of the year each has the children, with no schedule to look anything up in. Here is what that looks like in practice.

This model does not read a figure off a table and does not take a percentage of anybody's pay. The state publishes a single expression and everything goes into it at once: the higher earner's net monthly income, the two parents' net incomes added together, and the approximate share of the year the higher earner has the children. Out of it comes one number, and a separate multiplier is applied for each child beyond the first.

Two things follow that no schedule state has to deal with. The parenting-time share is not an adjustment applied to an amount worked out without it, it is a term inside the formula, appearing both in the fraction that scales the whole calculation and in the subtraction at the heart of it. And the answer is SIGNED. If it comes out positive the higher earner pays it; if it comes out negative the lower earner pays its absolute value to the higher earner. So the formula decides which parent owes rather than assuming it, and a parent with most of the year and little of the income can find the direction reversed.

The scaling fraction is itself banded by income, and the bands do not all run the same way. At low combined incomes the fraction rises with income; through the middle it is flat; at the top it falls as income rises, so the formula keeps producing a larger order on a larger income while taking a smaller slice of it. There is no ceiling anywhere in it and no floor either. What sits underneath is a separate low-income provision that reduces the amount for an obligor earning under full-time minimum wage, and what sits above is a court's discretion to depart from the figure where the case does not fit it.

The figure California's own guideline works from is net disposable income, under Cal. Fam. Code § 4059, applied by § 4055(b)(1) and (b)(2).

What moves the number in California

• Both parents' net monthly incomes, and which of the two is larger
• Number of children covered by the order
• The higher earner's share of the overnights, which is a term inside the formula rather than an adjustment applied to it, and which past a point decides who pays
• Health insurance for the children, under a rule this estimate does not apply
• Work-related childcare for the children, under a rule this estimate does not apply
• Support already being paid for children from another relationship, which comes off before the formula runs

Income limits and judicial discretion

We hold no income ceiling for California, so the estimate on this page keeps computing as income rises rather than stopping at a row. What California's own guideline does at the top of its schedule is a question this site has not answered for this state, so read a figure at a high income as our model rather than as the state's own. Courts hold authority to depart from a guideline figure when it produces an amount that does not match what the children actually need. California gives judges a moderate amount of room on custody and parenting time, so expect the order to start from the guideline figure and move with the facts of the case.

California child support examples

These three examples run through the same California 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 California's own parenting-time rule is applied to every figure below rather than left off it. At this count the rule is already doing something, so the 80 nights are priced into these amounts rather than waiting to be taken off them. The table further down the page shows what other counts do to the same family.

Comparing the first two examples shows what a second child is worth in California: the order moves from $990 to $1,583a month on identical incomes. The third example raises the paying parent's earnings and adds health insurance and childcare, which are credited back against the obligation rather than added on top of it.

How parenting time changes support in California

California adjusts for parenting time, we compute it, and the mechanism is one this site has not met anywhere else: there is no adjustment. Cal. Fam. Code § 4055 does not work out an obligation and then reduce it for overnights. The share of the year is a term INSIDE the formula, CS = K[HN - (H%)(TN)], and it appears in two places at once. It sits inside K, which § 4055(b)(3) builds as one plus your share up to an even split and two minus your share above one, and it sits inside the bracket, multiplied by the two incomes combined. So there is no threshold to clear, no coefficient to apply and no unadjusted amount to compare against, and asking what a California order would be "before the parenting-time adjustment" has no answer.

That has a practical consequence worth more than the taxonomy. In every other state on this site with a computed rule, the overnight count moves the SIZE of the order. Here it can move the DIRECTION. § 4055(b)(5) settles the sign rather than leaving it to be inferred: a positive result is paid by the higher earner to the lower, and a negative result is paid by the lower earner to the higher. The bracket turns negative once the higher earner's share of the year passes their share of the income, so a parent who wins most of the calendar and earns a minority of the money stops being the payer and becomes the recipient. There is no night count that marks the switch, because where it falls depends on the two incomes.

Some rows of the table above say "No estimate" rather than a figure, and that is deliberate. California runs its formula on NET disposable income, this form collects gross, and California publishes no conversion between the two. Away from that sign change the substitution is safe in a way we can state: it pushes the figure up rather than down, always, so the number is a ceiling on what a court would reach. Close to the sign change it stops being safe in either direction, because the two things being subtracted are nearly equal and the tax difference between the two households is larger than the gap between them. We show nothing there rather than a number that could be out by a multiple or could point at the wrong parent.

One more thing about the count itself, because it is the weakest input on this page rather than the strongest. § 4055(b)(1)(D) does not ask for overnights. It asks for the "approximate percentage of time that the high earner has or will have PRIMARY PHYSICAL RESPONSIBILITY for the children", and California has published no rule turning nights into that percentage. Its courts allocate school hours, daycare and time with third parties on the facts of the case: DaSilva v. DaSilva says courts "approximate hours of responsibility" and have "the discretion to apportion time for school hours", and In re Marriage of Katzberg upheld a judge crediting a father with the hours his child spent at school. So two California families with identical overnight counts can land on different percentages, and the percentage is what the formula reads.

Overnights are the second biggest lever after income, and they are the one parents most often underestimate. The reasoning is straightforward: a parent who has the children a third of the year is already paying for food, utilities, and a bedroom during that time, so the transfer payment to the other household falls to avoid charging twice for the same costs.

The table below runs one family through the California guideline at 6 parenting-time levels. Income is held at $5,000 and $3,000 a month with two children, so the only thing changing between rows is the number of overnights. It follows California's own published rule, and the state's worksheet linked below is still the document a court works from.

The size and the shape of that movement are what parenting-time disputes and support disputes are usually arguing about at the same time, in different clothing.

Where California starts on parenting time

California does not presume equal parenting time. That is our own record rather than California's own custody law. Courts decide the schedule on the best interests of the children, so the overnight count is established case by case rather than assumed. Parents who expect substantial time should treat it as something to be negotiated deliberately, and the section above is what California's own guidelines do with the count you end up with, which is worth reading before you agree to one.

Our record has California requiring mediation before a contested custody hearing, typically around $350 a session. That is our own record rather than California's own court rules. Because the parenting schedule that comes out of mediation drives the support figure, the overnight count is worth working out carefully there rather than leaving it to be argued later.

Getting a child support order in California

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

6 months

Waiting period

6 months

Typical uncontested

7 months

Typical contested

about 1.5 years

Support before the case is finished

You need 6 months of residency in California before you can file, and a statutory period of 6 months 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 California's clock begins. A contested case in California runs about 1.5 years on average, against 7 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

Family law attorneys in California typically run $300 to $650 an hour, and mediation costs roughly $350a 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 California; 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 a California 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 California'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.

California guideline authority and official worksheet

The California child support guideline in our data is:

• Cal. Fam. Code § 4055

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.

Senate Bill 343 did not amend Cal. Fam. Code § 4055. It repealed the section and re-enacted it, and the re-enacted version changed the K-factor brackets that set what share of income goes to support. The change took effect January 1, 2024 and became operative September 1, 2024. A pre-2024 copy of § 4055 reads almost identically and produces a different number, so check which version you are looking at.

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 California'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.

• California courts , the state judiciary site from our California 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 California

• 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 whose text we do not have. 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 whose formula we do not have. 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, so the Georgia estimate is the presumptive amount before that adjustment.
• Where a state's own schedule has been transcribed, the basic obligation is read straight off it. Where it has not, the figure comes from a national approximation of the tables courts read from, and the source panel on that state's page says which of the two you are looking at. That approximation has been measured against the seven transcribed schedules keyed to the same thing it is, at 546 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 seven from $8,000 up, reaching 69 to 240 percent above those states' own tables at $30,000. So a modeled figure at a high combined income is the least reliable number this calculator returns, and near $6,000 is where the approximation lands closest.
• 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, so two states are handled differently. 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. New Jersey's Appendix IX-F schedule ends at $3,600 of combined weekly net income, and courts are instructed in capital letters not to extrapolate past it, so we read the obligation at the schedule's last row and treat the result as the minimum basic support award rather than as a guideline amount. Appendix IX-A requires a New Jersey court to add to that minimum from the income above the ceiling. Modeling what a court adds is not something we can do honestly, because it turns on statutory factors rather than on arithmetic. Above the New Jersey line our figure is therefore a floor, and above the New York line it is not one: the addition New Jersey requires is what makes its schedule figure a minimum, and no New York instrument says an award may not come in below the amount at the threshold. Both figures read as the low end of a realistic range and only one of them is a floor a reader can count on.
• The same schedule can also stop short at the bottom. New Jersey publishes no award figure below $180 of combined weekly net income, where the court sets the amount from the paying parent's income and living expenses within a published range. Our estimate at that income is a modeled figure with nothing from the state to check it against, and it says so.
• 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

California courts and statutes

• courts.ca.gov
• Cal. Fam. Code § 4055
• Cal. Fam. Code § 4057
• Cal. Fam. Code § 4058
• Cal. Fam. Code § 4059
• Cal. Lab. Code § 1182.12
• SB 343, Stats. 2023, Ch. 213
• leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
• leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
• dir.ca.gov

Where to read more

Background reading, not where the figures above came from. 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.