How is child support calculated? In most cases it is calculated according to something called the New Jersey Child Support Guidelines. These were developed over a period of time for cases where the combined family income is about $175,000 a year net or 250 gross.

The guidelines require the consideration of both the payers’ income, often the husband, and the payees’ income, often the wife. Let’s assume for a minute husband earns $100,000 a year and wife earns $50,000 a year. Let’s further assume that the husband is paying $20,000 a year in alimony that brings the husband’s income down to 80,000 and the wife’s income up to 70,000. The guidelines then take taxes from each and each party has a net income. Those two are then added together and that’s the family net income. The guidelines assign a child support obligation to that income. The obligation is then shared in the same proportion as each party’s income bears to their combined income.

There are a few other factors that are important. How many overnights the child spends with the party paying the support. If the child spends more than two overnights a week there is another worksheet used called the shared parenting worksheet which assumes that there are two full households that have to be maintained for the child and the calculations are little bit different.

Other things that are taken into consideration in the child support guidelines are the amount that each party is paying for the child’s health insurance and the guidelines’ child support is higher for children who are over 12.