Child Support: What Factors Determine Monthly Child Support?

There are several factors that the court looks at when determining a child support order. Your Southern California child support lawyer can explain each in more detail, but here is a brief overview.

The court looks to the following factors in determining child support:
• The parent’s current earnings, or potential earning capacity
• How much non-earning income each parent gets
• The number of children these parents have together, whether biological or adopted
• The strength of the relationship between each parent and the child
• Tax considerations
• The amount of other legal obligation owed by each parent, such as child support obligations from other relationships
• Health care costs
• Educational costs
• Any other special or unique circumstances. (Family Code 4055; see Family Code 4053.)

The above factors are essentially plugged into a formula to produce what is referred to as the guideline amount. This is almost always the amount that a parent of ordered to pay by the family courts.

Parents can agree to a non-guideline child support amount, but the court must approve any plan presented by the parents. And the court will always have the best interest of the child in mind (Family Code 4065 (a)). In order for the courts to approve a non-court ordered child support amount, they must determine that each parent knows their rights to child support, knows what the guideline amount is, that neither parent was pressured into an agreement and neither parent has received public assistance. And of course, the non-guideline amount would need to be in the best interest of the child.