Colorado Child Support Calculator

How Colorado calculates child support

Colorado 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 Colorado's own guideline works from is combined adjusted gross income, under C.R.S. § 14-10-115(7)(a)(I) and (7)(b).

What moves the number in Colorado

• Both parents' monthly incomes, and the gap between them
• Number of children covered by the order
• Court-ordered parenting time, through a statutory adjustment this estimate stops short of
• 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 ordered for children from another relationship

Income limits and judicial discretion

Colorado's schedule stops at $40,000 of combined adjusted gross monthly income and the statute says in terms that the top row is a minimum. C.R.S. § 14-10-115(7)(a)(VII) gives the judge discretion above the schedule "except that the presumptive basic child support obligation must not be less than it would be based on the highest level of adjusted gross income set forth in the schedule". So a court may order more and may not order less, which puts Colorado alongside Illinois and Washington rather than alongside Maryland, where the discretion runs both ways. Unlike New Mexico and Virginia, Colorado prints no formula for carrying the schedule past its last row, so there is nothing to compute above it and the figure stops climbing where the table does. At that top row the obligation is $3,398 for one child and $7,769 for six, read from Colorado's own table. Two things about the number itself: it is COMBINED income rather than one parent's, so two earners each under the line can be over it together, and it is ADJUSTED gross rather than gross. Colorado 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.

Colorado child support examples

These three examples run through the same Colorado 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 each figure is the presumptive amount before Colorado's statutory parenting time adjustment.

Comparing the first two examples shows what a second child is worth in Colorado: the order moves from $756 to $1,130a 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 Colorado

Colorado does adjust support for parenting time, and the adjustment is required rather than left to a judge's discretion. C.R.S. § 14-10-115(8)(h), whose parenting-time provisions took effect March 1, 2026, directs the court to apply a set formula to the noncustodial parent's basic obligation wherever there is a court-ordered parenting time schedule. The result is entered on the parenting time table at C.R.S. § 14-10-115(8)(h), a credit percentage for every overnight count from 0 to 365, 367 entries in all, which this site has transcribed and does not apply, which is attached to the state child support worksheet. It is a step inside the presumptive calculation, not a deviation argued for after the guideline figure is settled.

Our estimate does not include it. We do not have the text of that formula, and running our own coefficient in its place would quietly swap our arithmetic for the legislature's, which is a worse error than applying nothing. So what the calculator on this page returns for Colorado is the presumptive guideline amount before the parenting time adjustment. That figure is real and it is the correct starting point, but it is an intermediate one. Moving the overnight slider will not move it, because the number it produces sits at a stage of the calculation that comes before parenting time enters.

Two practical consequences follow. Where a case has no court-ordered parenting time schedule, the adjustment does not apply and support is calculated without it, so the amount shown here is the guideline figure itself. Where a schedule does exist, expect a Colorado order to differ from this estimate, and get the adjusted number off the parenting time table at C.R.S. § 14-10-115(8)(h) rather than from us. The worksheet is available through the Colorado courts and the state child support agency, both linked below, and any Colorado family law attorney can run it for your figures.

Where Colorado starts on parenting time

Colorado does not presume equal parenting time. That is our own record rather than Colorado's own custody law. Courts set the schedule on the best interests of the children, and once a schedule is ordered it feeds the support calculation directly through the statutory parenting time adjustment. So the overnight count is worth negotiating deliberately: it reaches the order, even though it does not reach the estimate on this page, which stops before the adjustment is applied.

Our record has Colorado requiring mediation before a contested custody hearing, typically around $275 a session. That is our own record rather than Colorado'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 Colorado

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

3 months

Waiting period

3 months

Typical uncontested

4 months

Typical contested

about 1.1 years

Support before the case is finished

You need 3 months of residency in Colorado before you can file, and a statutory period of 3 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 Colorado's clock begins. A contested case in Colorado runs about 1.1 years on average, against 4 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 Colorado typically run $250 to $450 an hour, and mediation costs roughly $275a 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 Colorado; 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 Colorado 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 Colorado'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.

Colorado guideline authority and official worksheet

Colorado carries its child support guideline across more than one instrument, and all of them are in our data:

• C.R.S. § 14-10-115
• House Bill 25-1159 (2025)

Those authorities control, and the worksheet published under them is the document a court works from. The estimate on this page models the guideline, it does not replace the worksheet.

House Bill 25-1159, signed May 31, 2025, rewrote C.R.S. § 14-10-115 rather than adjusting it. Section 2 of the act amended subsections (3), (7) and (8), section 13 gave them an effective date of March 1, 2026, and the schedule of basic child support obligations was repealed and re-enacted rather than amended. So a Colorado copy printed before that date is not a slightly older version of the current one, it is a different instrument. Check the date on anything you are working from.

Two of the changes matter to anyone reading a figure. The schedule now runs to $40,000 of combined adjusted gross monthly income, where the version it replaced stopped at $30,000, and § 14-10-115(7)(a)(VII) states in terms what happens above the top row: the judge has discretion, "except that the presumptive basic child support obligation must not be less than it would be based on the highest level of adjusted gross income set forth in the schedule." That is a minimum, not a cap.

One gap to know about on this page rather than discover later. The same act also replaced how Colorado handles parenting time: the 1.50 multiplier is repealed, the 92-overnight threshold that used to switch a case onto the shared worksheet is gone, and a table at § 14-10-115(8)(h) setting a credit percentage for each overnight count takes their place. We have transcribed that table, all 367 entries of it, and we do not apply it, because the enacted bill prints the subsection that applies it with the repealed words struck through and the text we can extract does not preserve the strikethrough. So no parenting-time adjustment is applied to Colorado here and the overnight input does not move the figure on this page. A Colorado order entered under the current statute will reflect the overnights; this estimate is the amount before that.

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 Colorado'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.

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

• 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

Colorado courts and statutes

• courts.state.co.us
• CRS 14-10-114 maintenance formula
• C.R.S. § 14-10-115
• C.R.S. § 14-10-115(8)(h)
• House Bill 25-1159 (2025)

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.