There are about 6.8 million child support obligations in the United States. The average United States child support obligation in 2020 was roughly $5,760.00 a year but, only about 43.5% of people paying or receiving child support, actually get all of it. Today, I want to talk to you about how child support is calculated in the state of Florida. Now, maybe you don’t have a current child support obligation and you’re just interested in doing some math on it, or you think you’re either paying or receiving too much or too little. So today I’m going to help you understand how you can go about verifying or calculating what the Child Support should be under the laws in the state of Florida.
Child support is governed by Florida Statute 61.30, and there are various considerations that go into deriving a calculation for child support. First and foremost, is your income and the income of the other parent. The income that’s used for calculating child support is the net monthly income. Gross income is your full pay, net income is after lawful legal deductions from your pay, things like taxes and Social Security and Medicare. Here the calculation is based on the net income and it’s a monthly figure. If you’re paid weekly, biweekly, or some other method, that has to be calculated into a monthly figure for purposes of calculating your child support.
Other things that go into determining the amount of the Child Support include the cost of childcare (so the parents can work), health insurance costs for the child or children, and any uncovered medical expenses such as dental, eyeglasses, and things of that nature for the children. Those go into the calculation and the key to using them is, how much are they and who makes the payments for those things?
If the parents each have at least 20% of the overnights with the kids. That would equate to 73 or more overnights per year. Then there’s an additional step in the calculation that makes adjustments for the amount of time that the children spend with each parent. Again, that has to be a greater than 20% with each parent.
The Supreme Court has given an outline, instructions, and actually a form to assist people in making these child support calculations. That form can be located, can be downloaded in the from the comments below and it’s 12.902E. And again, you can download the form below, but when you go through the form it is a little bit confusing and it’s quite tedious. What we’ve done is created a custom child support calculator, we also make available to you in the comments below. All you have to do is click on the link for the custom Florida Child support calculator, input your specific amounts for the things that we’ve talked about, and it will help you get a real good idea of what the Child Support obligation is likely to be for your situation.