Texas Child Support Calculator

How Texas calculates child support

Texas sets child support with the Percentage of Income Model, and we have read the guideline that says so, which means a fixed percentage set by the number of children is applied to the paying parent's income alone. Here is what that looks like in practice.

The Percentage of Income Model skips the combined-income step entirely. A fixed percentage, set by the number of children being supported, is applied to the paying parent's income on its own. The receiving parent's earnings do not enter the arithmetic. That makes the guideline figure far easier to predict in advance, and it is the reason two families with identical total income can end up with very different orders depending on which parent earns what.

The trade-off is that the model is blind to the other side of the household. A paying parent whose former spouse out-earns them by a wide margin arrives at the same guideline number as one supporting a parent with no income at all. Courts hold the discretion to depart from the guideline figure when the result does not fit the family, and a large income disparity in the receiving parent's favor is one of the situations where a departure gets argued.

Credits still apply on top of the percentage. Health insurance premiums for the children reduce the obligation, as does support already ordered for children from an earlier relationship. Where the state's guideline accounts for parenting time, substantial time with the paying parent reduces it further.

The figure Texas's own guideline works from is monthly net resources, under Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125(b).

What moves a Texas order

• The paying parent's income (the receiving parent's income is not part of the formula)
• Number of children covered by the order
• Health insurance paid for the children
• Support already ordered for children from another relationship

Income limits and judicial discretion

Texas runs the guideline up to $11,700 of monthly income and stops there. Earnings above that ceiling are not automatically pulled into the formula, so two parents earning very different amounts above the cap can arrive at the same guideline figure. Courts retain authority to order more when the children's needs justify it, which is why high-income cases in Texas are less predictable than the guideline alone suggests. Texas 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 Texas

We have withdrawn our Texas child support estimate, because the guideline runs on an income figure we cannot work out from what this form asks you.

We are not showing you a child support figure for Texas, and this is what sits behind that. Texas does not use the kind of schedule most states publish, so this page never ran on our national approximation. It ran on Texas'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 Texas's and some of it was ours, and from the outside a reader could not tell which part was which.

Texas's guideline percentages are printed in Tex. Fam. Code 154.125(b) rather than delegated to a schedule, and they are held here as the statute states them. Its ceiling is not printed there: 154.125(a-1) hands the ceiling to the state's child support agency to publish in the Texas Register, and the ceiling this site holds comes from the agency's notice rather than from the statute. Chapter 154 itself has since been read, so the schedule below $1,000 a month, what happens above the ceiling, and the fact that possession time is a factor a judge weighs rather than a term in the formula are all held here as Texas states them.

The statute states the percentages against NET RESOURCES, and this form collects gross income. Texas defines net resources at 154.062 and hands the conversion from one to the other to tax charts its child support agency republishes every year, under 154.061(b), and those charts are not held here. None of the six deductions 154.062 takes out on the way is something this form could work out from what it asks you. So the percentage was the state's and the figure it was charged against was not, and a percentage meant for a smaller number applied to a larger one runs high. We can state that direction, which is why the number lasted as long as it did, and we cannot tell you by how much. Union dues come out of the total with no ceiling stated anywhere in the chapter, and nothing on this page asks what yours are.

We have since read Texas's guideline, and it is what tells us the estimate cannot come back yet rather than what brings it back. The rule is clear enough to describe to you. The figure it works from is one the state hands to a document published separately, and until we hold that document our answer would be our own arrangement of Texas's percentages rather than Texas's guideline result.

If you need a Texas figure now, Texas Register, August 29, 2025 issue, publishing the Title IV-D agency ceiling under Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125(a-1) and Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125(b) is what carries it, and a Texas 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 Texas's child support law. Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125 - read from the whole of chapter 154 at tcss.legis.texas.gov, on September 21, 2026. No Texas child support figure on this site is computed from what it holds for Texas, because the guideline runs through the § 154.061(b) gross-to-net conversion, delegated to annual agency tax charts, and this site does not hold those charts. We will publish a Texas figure here once one can be computed from Texas's own documents, to the same standard as every other state on this site.

Where parenting time fits in Texas child support

Texas is one of the states where the answer is: it does not. Guideline support here does not change with the number of overnights. Run the same family through the Texas guideline at 52 nights a year and again at equal time, and the figure is identical, because overnights are not one of the guideline's inputs. The calculation runs on income, the number of children before the court, and other children a parent already supports. The controlling authority is Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125.

The state's own tool is the plainest evidence of that. Texas publishes the Office of the Attorney General monthly child support calculator, and its complete set of entries contains no field for overnights, possession days, parenting time, or the possession schedule. An official calculator cannot apply a variable its guideline does not contain.

Time with the children still reaches support, just not inside the formula. Tex. Fam. Code § 154.123(b)(4) makes "the amount of time of possession of and access to a child" a ground on which a court may depart from the standard calculation, and where the guideline figure itself is not at stake a departure can move the order in either direction. That is a judgment made on the facts of a particular case, not a credit that switches on at a set number of nights. The trigger has no number attached to it anywhere in the statute: no overnight count, no percentage of the year. If you expect to have the children a substantial share of the year and you want that reflected in the order, it is an argument to make to the court, not an adjustment the guideline makes for you.

Where Texas starts on parenting time

Texas does not presume equal parenting time. That is our own record rather than Texas's own custody law. Courts set the schedule on the best interests of the children, and that schedule governs where the children actually are, which nights each parent covers, and how holidays are split. What it does not do is feed the guideline calculation, which is why two Texas families with identical incomes and very different schedules arrive at the same guideline figure.

Getting a child support order in Texas

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

2 months

Uncontested, our estimate

3 months

Contested, our estimate

about 1.2 years

Support before the case is finished

Our record has 6 months of residency in Texas 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 Texas's clock begins. On our own estimates, a contested case in Texas runs about 1.2 years, 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 Texas run $250 to $500 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 Texas; 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 Texas 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 Texas'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.

Texas guideline authority and official worksheet

The Texas child support guideline in our data is:

• Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125 - read from the whole of chapter 154 at tcss.legis.texas.gov, on September 21, 2026.

That authority controls, and the worksheet published under it is the document a court works from. We are not showing a Texas estimate, so that document and the state's own child support agency are where a figure has to come from for now.

Texas splits its guideline across two instruments, and the statute on its own will not give you the ceiling. Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125(b) prints the percentages, 20 percent of net resources for one child rising to 40 percent for five or more, and those are in the statute itself. Subsection (a-1) does something different with the income ceiling: it delegates the figure to the Title IV-D agency rather than fixing it in the code, so a reader who follows § 154.125 looking for $11,700 will not find it there.

The ceiling is published in the Texas Register, and the current $11,700 of monthly net resources appeared in the August 29, 2025 issue with effect from September 1, 2025, up from $9,200. The agency republishes it every six years indexed to inflation, which gives the figure a predictable shelf life: the next movement is due around 2031. That is worth knowing before you rely on a ceiling quoted anywhere without a date on it.

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. Texas publishes the form below, and it is the one to fill in once your figures are settled.

• Office of the Attorney General monthly child support calculator
• Texas courts , the state judiciary site from our Texas 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 Texas

• 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

Texas courts and statutes

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

• txcourts.gov
• Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125
• Texas Register, August 29, 2025 issue
• Tex. Fam. Code § 154.123(b)(4)
• csapps.oag.texas.gov

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.