Delaware Child Support Calculator

How Delaware calculates child support

Our record puts Delaware on the Melson Formula, though that classification is our record's and has not been checked against the Delaware documents this site holds, which means each parent's own basic needs are reserved first, and only the income above that reserve is available for support. Here is what that looks like in practice.

The Melson Formula is the Income Shares Model with a needs test attached to the front of it, and only three states use it. Before any support is calculated, a self-support reserve is subtracted from each parent's income. That reserve is the amount a parent needs for their own housing, food, and basic living costs, and it is protected from the calculation entirely.

Whatever income remains above the reserve is then run through two stages. First comes primary support, a per-child amount covering the children's basic needs, divided between the parents in proportion to their income above the reserve. Second comes a standard of living adjustment, which pulls an additional share of the remaining income into the order so the children share in the parents' actual circumstances rather than being held to a subsistence figure.

The practical effect is a formula that treats low and high earners very differently. A parent earning near the reserve pays little or nothing, because there is almost no income above the reserve to divide. A parent well above the reserve pays an amount comparable to an income shares state, since the standard of living stage keeps the order proportional to what the family actually earns.

What Delaware protects before support is calculated

The Melson Formula sets aside an amount for each parent's own basic needs before any income is treated as available, and only income above it feeds the calculation. Delaware publishes its own figure: $1,600 per month.

Primary support comes next, and in Delaware it is two terms rather than one: $420 a month for each child plus a flat $380 for the household that does not change with the number of children. One child draws $800 and three draw $1,640. That total is divided between the parents in proportion to their income above the reserve. A standard of living allowance is added on top, at Delaware's own published percentage of the income left after that: 12% for one child, rising with each additional child. Underneath all of it sits a minimum order, $160 a month for one child.

What moves a Delaware order

• Each parent's income above the self-support reserve
• Number of children, which sets the primary support amount
• Parenting time, in most states, under a rule we have not yet verified for this one
• Support already ordered for children from another relationship

Income limits and judicial discretion

We hold no income ceiling for Delaware. What Delaware's own guideline does at the top of its schedule is a question this site has not answered for this state. Courts hold authority to depart from a guideline figure when it produces an amount that does not match what the children actually need. Delaware gives judges a moderate amount of room on custody and parenting time, so the final order moves with the facts of the case as well as with the arithmetic.

No child support estimate for Delaware

We have withdrawn our Delaware child support estimate, because the arithmetic around Delaware's own figures was ours rather than the state's.

We are not showing you a child support figure for Delaware, and this is what sits behind that. Delaware does not use the kind of schedule most states publish, so this page never ran on our national approximation. It ran on Delaware's own formula shape, with arithmetic of ours around it.

That distinction is the reason for this page, so here it is plainly. Some of what went into the old estimate was Delaware's and some of it was ours, and from the outside a reader could not tell which part was which.

Delaware's self support allowance, its primary support allowance, its standard of living percentages and its minimum order are Delaware's own published figures, and our estimate applied them as Delaware's.

What we never read is the guideline those figures sit inside. How income is worked out before any of them apply, and what Delaware does once a parent has the children a substantial share of the year, were ours rather than the state's. The overnight slider on this page moved nothing at all.

Where the state's own numbers are arranged by arithmetic of ours, the answer is ours rather than the state's, whatever the inputs were. So we have stopped showing it rather than keep presenting our arrangement of Delaware's figures as Delaware's guideline result.

If you need a Delaware figure now, Form 509, 2026 Delaware Child Support Formula, Rev 2/26 V2.01, Delaware Family Court is what carries it, and a Delaware family law attorney or the state's own child support agency can run your figures against it. Here is what this site has on file for Delaware's child support law. Delaware Family Court Form 509, 2026 Delaware Child Support Formula (Rev 2/26 V2.01) - read from the official copy at courts.delaware.gov, on July 28, 2026. It is published by the courts themselves rather than enacted. No Delaware child support figure on this site is computed from what it holds for Delaware. We will publish a Delaware figure here once one can be computed from Delaware's own documents, to the same standard as every other state on this site.

How parenting time changes support in Delaware

Most states do reduce support when the paying parent has the children a substantial share of the year. What differs between them is not just where the line sits. It is whether there is a line at all, and whether crossing it switches the worksheet, nudges the arithmetic, or does nothing. We apply a state's parenting-time adjustment only once we have verified that state's own rule and built the mechanism behind it, and Delaware is not there yet.

Four mechanisms are in use across the country, and they are not variations on one idea. The first is a cliff. Support is worked out one way below a set number of overnights and a different way at or above it, so the figure steps rather than slides. North Carolina is the clearest example and the first one our calculator computes in full, from the state's own published schedule. Its guidelines, adopted under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 50-13.4(c1), send a case to Worksheet B at 123 overnights a year, roughly 34 percent of the calendar. At 122 nights the standard worksheet applies. At 123 a different one does, and the same family can come out several hundred dollars apart on either side of that single night.

Where the line sits is not a national figure, and that is worth seeing rather than being told. Illinois runs the same kind of cliff and, for a calculation before January 1, 2027, puts it 23 nights further along: under 750 ILCS 5/505(a)(3.8) the shared care route applies where each parent exercises 146 or more overnights a year, and the basic obligation is multiplied by 1.5. We compute Illinois too. So under that rule the same family, with the same schedule, gets the adjustment in North Carolina and misses it in Illinois anywhere between 123 and 145 nights. From January 1, 2027, Illinois' Public Act 104-0733 moves its line down to 110 and adds an adjustment below 146, which the Illinois page sets out. The exact wording matters as much as the number: both of those thresholds are inclusive, so a parent sitting exactly on one qualifies, while other states word the same rule as "more than", which excludes them.

The part of a cliff rule that catches parents out is that both of them have to clear the threshold, not only the one asking for the adjustment. Work that through and the result is genuinely counter-intuitive. A parent with 250 overnights leaves the other parent 115, which sits below a 123-night bar, so the case is not shared custody under the rule at all and the shared worksheet never comes out. Getting well past an even split can cost you the adjustment an even split would have given you. If you are negotiating toward a particular number of nights, check what the schedule leaves the other parent, not only what it gives you.

The second mechanism has no line in it. Some states apply a parenting-time offset across the whole range, from the first overnight that can be determined, so every additional night moves the number a little and there is no threshold to reach. Michigan is the verified example and the second state our calculator computes in full. Under 2025 Michigan Child Support Formula Manual § 3.03 the offset applies to every support determination, so a Michigan parent with five overnights a year gets one. Guides that report a single trigger figure for a state like this are usually pointing at one of two things that are not triggers: the place where the curve steepens, which is a property of the arithmetic, or a rule about something else entirely. The 21 overnights often quoted for Michigan are the second kind. That figure governs when a change in parenting time is enough to ask a court to modify an existing order, and it has nothing to do with how the offset is worked out.

The third is no adjustment at all. Texas is the plain case: Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125 runs on the paying parent's net resources and the number of children, and the state's own official calculator has no field for overnights. Possession time reaches a Texas order only as one of the factors a court may weigh in deciding whether to depart from the guideline figure, under Tex. Fam. Code § 154.123(b)(4), and a departure can move the order in either direction.

The fourth is a formula the legislature wrote out. Georgia's parenting time adjustment became mandatory on January 1, 2026 under O.C.G.A. § 19-6-15(g), which directs the court to apply a set calculation to the noncustodial parent's basic obligation wherever a court-ordered parenting time schedule exists. That is a required step inside the presumptive calculation, not an argument made after the guideline figure is settled.

Those four produce very different answers for the same family, which is why we are not applying a general rule to Delaware in the meantime. We used to. The threshold we applied was 146 nights, which is Illinois's statutory number generalised to all fifty, the size of the reduction had no legal source anywhere, and neither survived being checked, so both are gone rather than defaulted. What replaces them is each state's own rule, one state at a time, and that work has started. North Carolina's page calculates from North Carolina's published schedule and applies North Carolina's own threshold. Michigan's computes Michigan's own equations and applies an offset with no threshold at all. Illinois's reads a banded schedule keyed to net income and applies its own parenting-time rule: a 146-night cliff for a calculation before January 1, 2027, and Public Act 104-0733's 110-overnight rule from that date. Those three were done in that order on purpose: the second is the opposite mechanism to the first, and the third shares a mechanism with the first while differing from it on every number in it. We will publish Delaware's parenting-time adjustment here once we have read it out of Delaware's own guidelines to the same standard. Until then Delaware's official child support worksheet, linked below, is where the adjusted number comes from.

Where Delaware starts on parenting time

Delaware does not presume equal parenting time. That is our own record rather than Delaware'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 should find out what Delaware's own guidelines do with the count they end up with before agreeing to it.

Getting a child support order in Delaware

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

6 months

Waiting period, in our record

6 months

Uncontested, our estimate

6 months

Contested, our estimate

about 1.0 years

Our own uncontested estimate for Delaware is shorter than the 180-day waiting period our record has for it, so the uncontested figure shown is that waiting period, the same floor our timeline calculator applies. Where the period is a separation that began before filing, a case can finish sooner after filing.

Support before the case is finished

Our record has 6 months of residency in Delaware before you can file, and a waiting period of 6 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 Delaware's clock begins. On our own estimates, a contested case in Delaware runs about 1.0 years, against 6 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 Delaware run $250 to $450 an hour, and mediation costs roughly $275 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 Delaware; 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 Delaware 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 Delaware'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.

Delaware guideline authority and official worksheet

What we hold for Delaware, with what it is and how we hold it. It is not named here as the text that controls:

• Delaware Family Court Form 509, 2026 Delaware Child Support Formula (Rev 2/26 V2.01) - read from the official copy at courts.delaware.gov, on July 28, 2026. It is published by the courts themselves rather than enacted.

We are not showing a Delaware estimate, so the state's own courts and child support agency are where a figure has to come from for now.

Delaware keeps the working figures on a court form rather than in a statute or a rule, and the form is titled by calendar year, which points to a new edition each year. Form 509 carries the self support allowance, the primary support allowance, the standard of living percentages, the minimum order and the parenting-time bands, all on the same sheet. A Delaware figure quoted without a form year attached to it should be treated with caution for that reason.

The primary support allowance is the part most summaries state wrongly, and the error grows with the size of the family. It is not a per-child amount. It is $420 for each child PLUS a flat $380 for the household, so one child draws $800 and three draw $1,640. Anything that reports a single per-child figure for Delaware is describing a rule the state does not have.

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 Delaware'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.

• Delaware courts , the state judiciary site from our Delaware 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

This page does not produce a child support figure for your state, and the panel above sets out why in full. The short version: a guideline figure on this site is computed from the state's own published guideline, and no figure for your state is computed from the documents this site holds for it, which the authority section on this page names. What we were showing until recently was built by us to stand in for one, and we would rather show you nothing than show you that.

What this page does instead for Delaware

• It sets out what your state's guideline is recorded as doing, and says plainly which parts of that record somebody has checked against a document and which parts nobody has.
• It says what we were previously calculating, and what we found when we looked at it. That finding is the part you can use, whether or not we ever publish a figure here.
• It points at the document that carries the real answer where we can name one, and says so where we cannot rather than sending you to a citation nobody here has opened.
• Nothing on this page is a dollar amount for your family. The other calculators on this site still run for your state, and the filing fees and waiting periods on your state page are unaffected by any of this.

Where to get the real number

Your state's own worksheet is the controlling document, and it is the thing to work from. A licensed family law attorney in your state, or your state's child support agency, can run your figures against it and tell you what a court would be starting from.

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

Sources

Delaware courts and statutes

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

• courts.delaware.gov
• Delaware Family Court Form 509, 2026 Delaware Child Support Formula (Rev 2/26 V2.01)

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.