Child Support by State: Calculator Guide and Formula Comparison (2026)

Every state has child support guidelines, but the formulas are not the same. Most use the Income Shares Model, four use the Percentage of Income Model, and three use the Melson Formula. Three states use none of the three. Knowing which model applies to you is the first step in understanding what your support order will look like.

This guide walks through each model with worked examples, explains what counts as income, and covers the adjustments most likely to change the final number. For a state-specific estimate, use our Child Support Calculator. Read what it says beside your figure before you use it: for a minority of states it runs that state's own transcribed guideline, and for the rest it runs a national approximation of ours, and each state's page says which case it is in.

The six approaches, not three

Most summaries of child support say there are three models, and this guide said the same until it was checked against our own records. It is wrong in two directions: four states were on the wrong list here, and three states do something none of the three models describes. Every list below now matches the state records the calculator dispatches on, and tests/content/guide-claims.test.ts fails if a name here stops matching.

Income Shares Model. Used in 40 states. The model assumes children should receive the same proportion of parental income they would have received if the parents lived together. The formula starts with combined parental income, sets a "basic obligation" from it, and divides that obligation between parents in proportion to their incomes. Most states set the basic obligation by reading a published schedule; New York, the one Income Shares state on this site that this calculator computes without a schedule behind it, takes a percentage of the combined figure under N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act 413(1)(c)(2). What "income" means is a per-state question and it is not always gross pay: of the Income Shares states whose own guideline this site has read, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia read theirs at a pre-tax figure, while Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington read theirs at combined NET income. Illinois is the only one of those five that publishes a table for converting gross to net, which is why its page converts and the other four say they have substituted. Maryland and Minnesota are the reminder that the two labels are not the whole story. Maryland reads its schedule at "adjusted actual income", which is pre-tax like a gross figure and then has three specific obligations taken out of it. Minnesota reads its table at PICS, "parental income for determining child support", which is gross income with exactly one deduction and no tax anywhere. Both belong with the gross group without being gross pay, and neither name would tell you that. New York is the sharpest version of the same point and it sits at the edge of that group rather than inside it: N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act 413(1)(b)(5) builds income from six clauses and then removes eight named items, of which the only taxes are FICA and New York City or Yonkers local taxes. Neither federal income tax nor New York state income tax comes off, so it is not a net figure, and it is not untouched gross either. That is why the New York calculator states no direction for the gap between what you type and what the statute reads, where every other verified state on this site can tell you which way its own answer errs. The 40: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

That list used to run to 45 names, above a sentence that said 41, and the four extra are worth naming because each was a real error rather than a rounding: Wisconsin and Mississippi are percentage states, Nevada uses tiered percentages, and Hawaii uses the Melson Formula, which this guide said a few lines further down while listing it here as well.

Percentage of Income Model. Used in Texas, Mississippi, Alaska and Wisconsin. The paying parent pays a percentage of income based on the number of children, and the other parent's income is generally not part of the calculation. The four are not one rule with four rate cards: Texas applies its percentages to "net resources" as its statute defines them, Alaska to adjusted annual income, and Alaska's rate rises by a fixed increment for every child past the third rather than stopping at a table. Wisconsin's rates are not published on this site at all, because the ones we inherited did not survive checking.

Tiered percentages. Nevada, and it belongs on its own. The rate steps down as income rises rather than staying flat, so a Nevada obligation is three percentages applied to three slices of income rather than one percentage applied to all of it.

Published schedule on one parent's income. North Dakota, and it is worth separating from the percentage model because most summaries do not. N.D. Admin. Code § 75-02-04.1-10 is a table with a row for each $100 of the paying parent's monthly net income and a column for one child through six or more, and the amount is read off it. There is no percentage anywhere in the chapter, so any flat North Dakota rate you find quoted is somebody's description rather than the state's rule. The net income the table is keyed to is defined by the guidelines themselves, using a federal tax computed at single filing status and a state tax fixed at eleven percent of it, so it is not take-home pay either.

One published formula, no schedule. California, and it left the Income Shares list in August 2026 when Cal. Fam. Code § 4055 was read for this site. Most summaries file California under Income Shares because both parents' incomes count, which is true of the inputs and false of the arithmetic. There is no schedule to look anything up in and no combined obligation to divide by income share. § 4055(a) publishes one expression, CS = K[HN - (H%)(TN)]: the higher earner's net monthly income, less their share of the year applied to both parents' net incomes combined, scaled by a factor the statute reads off a five-band income table, with a further multiplier for each child beyond the first. Two consequences no schedule state has. The share of the year is inside the formula rather than applied to a figure worked out without it, so there is no threshold and no unadjusted amount. And the answer is signed: § 4055(b)(5) has the higher earner pay a positive result and the lower earner pay the absolute value of a negative one, so the formula decides the direction of payment as well as the size.

Melson Formula. Used in Delaware, Hawaii, and Montana. A more complex variant of Income Shares that includes a "self-support reserve" allowing each parent to keep a baseline amount of income before any support obligation is calculated. All three states' figures have been read out of the state's own current instrument: Delaware's from Form 509, the 2026 Delaware Child Support Formula; Hawaii's from its Child Support Guidelines worksheet; and Montana's from CSSD policy bulletin CS 404.2, effective February 1, 2026. This guide said the opposite of that for a year after they were checked, and that is worth knowing about any page: copy written while something was unverified goes on rendering after it stops being.

Income Shares example: $5,000 combined income, two children, 70/30 custody

Assume the parents have a combined gross monthly income of $5,000 (Parent A: $3,500, Parent B: $1,500). Two children. Parent A has 30% parenting time; Parent B has 70%.

The figures below are the ones our own calculator produces for a state we have not transcribed, which means they come from our national approximation rather than from any state's schedule. It is worth seeing what that costs at this exact income, because the answer is not one answer. Our approximation puts the basic obligation for two children at $5,000 of combined monthly income at $1,188. The seven states whose own schedules we have transcribed and which price the same thing put it at $1,132 in Minnesota, $1,181 in West Virginia, $1,233 in New Mexico, $1,304 in Virginia, $1,349 in North Carolina, $1,356 in Maryland and $1,404 in Colorado. So around this income the approximation is close, and this is close to its best region. Notice that it is not close in one direction: it sits above Minnesota here and below the other six, which is the point of the whole exercise. Run the same comparison at $30,000 of combined monthly income and our figure comes out 69 to 240 percent above what those same seven states set, which is between 1.7 and 3.4 times their own figures. Where your state's own guideline has been read, the numbers on its page will differ from these, and the page says so.

Step 1: Find the basic child support obligation. Look up $5,000 combined income with two children. Our approximation puts the basic obligation at $1,188 per month.

Step 2: Pro-rate the obligation by income share. Parent A earns 70% of combined income (3,500 / 5,000). Parent A's share of the obligation: 70% of $1,188 = $832.

Step 3: Apply parenting-time adjustments. Parent A has 30% parenting time. Whether that changes the figure depends entirely on the state, and the mechanisms differ enough that there is no general answer (see "How parenting time affects child support" below). In a state where it does not, Parent A pays the full $832 to Parent B as the custodial parent.

Step 4: Add proportional shares of work-related childcare and health insurance. Where a state applies these, the premium and the childcare bill are added to the basic obligation and split in the same income proportion, and whichever parent pays gets credit for the other parent's share. Whether your state applies either is on that state's own page, because ours does not apply them everywhere.

That is the basic structure. Each state schedule produces different basic obligation numbers, and each state's adjustments differ in detail, but the four-step structure is the same.

Percentage of Income example: Texas

Texas applies fixed percentages to the obligor's "net resources" (gross income minus federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, state income tax, and the cost of the children's health insurance).

| Number of children | Percentage of net resources | |---|---| | 1 child | 20% | | 2 children | 25% | | 3 children | 30% | | 4 children | 35% | | 5 children | 40% | | 6+ children | At least 40% |

Example: Obligor has gross income of $6,000 per month. After federal taxes, Social Security, and Medicare, net resources are about $4,800. With two children, the order is 25% of $4,800 = $1,200 per month.

Texas caps the percentage application at the first $11,700 of monthly net resources. The Family Code hands that ceiling to the state's Title IV-D agency rather than fixing it in statute, and the agency republishes it every six years for inflation. It rose from $9,200 to $11,700 effective September 1, 2025. Above the cap, the court has discretion.

Melson Formula example: Delaware

The Melson Formula, used in Delaware, calculates support in three layers:

1. Self-support allowance. Each parent keeps a baseline amount of income to meet their own minimum needs. Delaware's is $1,600 a month per parent, from Form 509, the 2026 Delaware Child Support Formula (Rev 2/26). It is reissued every year, so check the current edition before relying on it.
2. Primary support obligation. Above the allowance, each parent contributes proportionally to a basic child support amount. Delaware's is a two-part rule rather than a per-child figure: $420 for each child plus $380 for the household, so two children come to $1,220 a month.
3. Standard of living adjustment (SOLA). Above the primary obligation, additional income produces additional support designed to give the children a share of the parents' improved standard of living. Delaware's SOLA rate is 17 percent for two children.

Example: Parent A earns $4,500/month, Parent B earns $2,500/month, two children with Parent B. These are the state's own figures, and the arithmetic below is what our calculator returns.

After subtracting the $1,600 allowance, Parent A has $2,900 of available income and Parent B has $900.

The primary obligation for two children is (2 x $420) + $380 = $1,220. Parent A's share is $2,900 / ($2,900 + $900), or about 76%, so Parent A's primary obligation is $931.

The SOLA charges 17 percent against the income Parent A has left once the allowance and that share are taken out: 17% of ($2,900 - $931) = $335.

Parent A's total order: $931 + $335 = $1,266 per month.

Delaware Family Court publishes worksheets that walk through each step, and the real calculation carries adjustments this summary does not. Hawaii and Montana are the same three-layer shape with different figures: Hawaii holds a $1,693 self-support reserve and a separate $1,303 reserve applied at the SOLA stage, and Montana states its personal allowance per year, at $20,748, which is $1,729 a month.

What counts as income

Almost everything counts. State guidelines define income broadly:

• Wages and salary, including bonuses, commissions, and overtime.
• Self-employment income, after legitimate business deductions. Courts scrutinize self-employment deductions closely because they can be used to mask income.
• Investment income. Dividends, interest, capital gains.
• Rental income. Net of mortgage interest, taxes, and operating expenses.
• Retirement income. Pension payments, IRA withdrawals, Social Security retirement.
• Disability and workers' compensation.
• Unemployment benefits.

Many states also include in-kind benefits (employer-provided housing, company cars) at fair market value.

Imputed income. If a parent is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, courts can impute income based on what the parent could reasonably earn. The standard varies: some states require a finding of bad faith; others impute based on earning capacity regardless of motive. A parent who quits a job during a divorce should expect imputed income unless there is a documented health, caregiving, or education reason.

How parenting time affects child support

Many states reduce the order when both parents have substantial time with the children, and we cannot tell you how many, because the rule has only been read for a handful of states and the answer differs in kind between them. There is no shared national threshold, and the widely repeated "40 percent of overnights" is not a rule any state adopted collectively. Four genuinely different mechanisms are in use among the states whose rules we have read, and they are not variations on one idea:

• A cliff. The case is worked out on one worksheet below a set number of overnights and on a different worksheet at or above it, so the figure steps rather than slides. North Carolina's Worksheet B applies at 123 overnights a year, roughly 34 percent of the calendar, under guidelines adopted pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. 50-13.4(c1). Thresholds are set state by state, so the number that applies to you is the one in your own state's guidelines and nowhere else.
• A continuous offset. Some states apply a parenting-time offset across the whole range, from the first overnight that can be determined, with no threshold to reach at all. Every additional night moves the number a little. Where a guide reports a single trigger figure for one of these states, it is usually pointing at the place where the curve steepens rather than at a switch, and a parent below that figure is still getting an offset.
• No adjustment at all. Texas is the clearest example: its guideline (Tex. Fam. Code 154.125) runs on the paying parent's net resources and the number of children, with no overnight or possession-time term at any level, and the state's own official calculator has no field for parenting time. Possession time can still be argued to a court as a reason to depart from the guideline amount, in either direction, under Tex. Fam. Code 154.123(b)(4). New York belongs here too, with one caution about what that is a statement about: neither N.Y. Fam. Ct. Act 413(1) nor N.Y. Dom. Rel. Law 240(1-b) contains a parenting-time term, and the only thing either says about time is a deviation factor conditioned on extraordinary visitation EXPENSES rather than on a count of nights. That is a reading of two sections rather than a claim about what New York courts do with a shared-custody household, which we have not looked at.
• A formula written into statute. Georgia made its adjustment mandatory in 2026. O.C.G.A. 19-6-15(g), whose parenting-time provisions took effect January 1, 2026, requires the court to apply a set formula to the noncustodial parent's basic obligation wherever there is a court-ordered parenting time schedule, with the result entered on Child Support Schedule C. The enacted text replaced the word "deviation" with "adjustment", which is the whole point: it is a required step in the presumptive calculation now, not something a judge can decline to reach. Where no parenting time order exists, support is calculated without it.

One feature of threshold states is worth knowing before you negotiate a schedule, because it works the opposite way to most people's intuition. The rule usually requires each parent to clear the line, not only the parent asking for the adjustment. 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 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. Check what a proposed schedule leaves the other parent, not only what it gives you.

A 50/50 schedule does not always produce zero support. If one parent earns substantially more, the higher-earning parent typically still pays the lower-earning parent something to equalize the children's standard of living between households.

Health insurance and childcare credits

Two adjustments come up in almost every case:

Health insurance for the children. The cost of the children's portion of the parent's health insurance premium is added to the basic obligation, then split proportionally. Whichever parent pays the premium gets credit for the other parent's share.

Work-related childcare. Daycare, after-school care, and summer camps that allow parents to work are added to the basic obligation and split proportionally. Most states do not include nanny costs above the cost of equivalent daycare unless the children have special needs.

These two adjustments can change the final order by hundreds of dollars per month, especially when childcare is significant.

Income caps and high earners

Most state guidelines stop applying mechanically above a certain income level:

• Texas: Caps the percentage at the first $11,700 of monthly net resources, raised from $9,200 effective September 1, 2025.
• California: No cap at all, and that is now a reading of the statute rather than our record. Cal. Fam. Code § 4055 was read in full for this site in August 2026 and contains no income ceiling of any kind: no top row to stop at, no clamp on either parent's income, and no figure above which the calculation changes. The scaling factor K falls as income rises in the top band, so the guideline takes a smaller fraction of a larger income and the obligation keeps growing anyway. What a very high income does reach is a court's discretion rather than the arithmetic: § 4057(b)(3) lets a court depart from the guideline where the paying parent has an extraordinarily high income and the formula would exceed the children's needs, and that provision carries no number. This guide used to add that DissoMaster, the guideline software California practitioners use, is rarely used above about $25,000 in monthly net income. That is a claim about how a commercial product is used in practice, we have no source for it, and it stays withdrawn: opening the statute settles the law and settles nothing about professional habit.
• New York: $193,000 of combined parental income, from form LDSS-4515 (Rev. 03/26), released March 1, 2026, which also sets the 2026 self-support reserve at $21,546. It is a threshold rather than a cap, and the chart says so in its own words: above the line the law "permits, but does not require" the use of the child support percentages, so the court may consider the additional income either by continuing the formula or by weighing the statutory factors. Note also that the chart does not stop at $193,000. Its table carries on in $100 steps to a last row of $199,999, so seeing figures printed above the threshold does not mean the threshold has been misread.
• New Jersey: The Appendix IX-F schedule ends at $3,600 of combined net weekly income, $187,200 a year, and the appendix tells courts in capital letters not to extrapolate it beyond that. Above that line the schedule award is the minimum basic support award and the court "must add" to it under the N.J.S.A. 2A:34-23 factors. Appendix IX-A § 20(b) puts the same rule as a direction: apply the guidelines up to $187,200 and supplement the award from the income above it. The current schedule took effect September 1, 2025 and replaced one that had stood since 2013, so a figure from an older copy is out of date.
• Pennsylvania: $30,000 of combined monthly net income is the hinge, and what happens above it is the opposite of what this guide used to say. Pa.R.Civ.P. 1910.16-3.1 governs high-income cases and makes the presumptive minimum "the support obligation that the trier-of-fact would have awarded if the parties' combined monthly net income was $30,000." That is a floor, not the start of open discretion, and the same rule then continues the guideline upward by published formula: the schedule's top row plus 4.0 percent of the excess for one child, rising to 6.3 percent for six. The Basic Child Support Schedule itself has since been read and transcribed. It starts at $1,300 of combined monthly net income, not the $500 this guide once gave, and runs in $50 steps to the $30,000 row.

Read these figures carefully, because most of them are not caps in the ordinary sense. Texas genuinely limits the percentage application. New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania do the opposite: their published figures are where the mechanical part of the calculation ends and the court gains room above it. They differ in a way that matters more than the wording suggests, and it is easy to read them as one rule. New Jersey and Pennsylvania make their figure a MINIMUM in terms, so a family above the line should expect an order at or above it: Appendix IX-A says a New Jersey court must add to the schedule amount, and Pa.R.Civ.P. 1910.16-3.1(a)(1) makes the amount at the top of the schedule a presumptive minimum. New York does not. Its chart says only that above the line the law "permits, but does not require" the use of the child support percentages, and no New York instrument anywhere says an award may not come in below the amount at the threshold. So for New York the figure reads as the low end of a realistic range because the discretion runs upward, which is a different and weaker thing than a floor. Above any of these lines, courts typically consider the children's reasonable needs and the lifestyle they would have had but for the divorce. High-earner cases often involve specific budgets for school, activities, and travel, which can produce significantly higher orders than a mechanical formula extension would.

Our calculator stops the income at each state's published figure, which is the right answer for a true cap and an understatement for a threshold. For New York and New Jersey specifically, treat our estimate above the line as the floor of a likely order rather than a prediction of it.

How to modify child support

Child support is modifiable when there is a "substantial change in circumstances." Common triggers:

• A change in either parent's income large enough to matter. Several states fix that as a percentage threshold and set their own number; none of those provisions has been read for this site, so this guide prints no figure for it. It used to say 15 percent.
• A change in custody or parenting time that crosses a guideline threshold.
• A change in the children's needs (medical, educational, special needs).
• Emancipation of one of the children covered by the order.
• A new child for either parent (some states adjust for after-born children, others do not).

The modification process is initiated in the same court that issued the original order. If both parents agree, the modification can usually be done by stipulation in a few weeks. Contested modifications follow the same procedures as the original case.

Modifications generally apply only from the date the motion is filed forward, not retroactively. If your circumstances change, file promptly.

Run your numbers

The state-specific math gets complicated quickly. Our Child Support Calculator applies your state's guideline model and its income ceiling where it has one. What else it applies depends on the state, and this is the part to read on the page rather than here: for the states whose own guideline we have transcribed, it runs that state's credits and its floors as the state writes them, and its parenting-time rule where the guideline has one. New York's does not, in the two sections we have read, so its figure is the same at every overnight count and its page says so rather than leaving you to notice. For the rest it applies no parenting-time adjustment at all, because the mechanisms differ too much to have a general rule stand in for them, and it does not apply every credit in every state. Each state's own page says which of those it did and did not do to your figure. For a full picture of total divorce costs, run it alongside the Divorce Cost Estimator.

This estimate is for planning purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. Consult a licensed family law attorney in your state for guidance specific to your situation.