Calculating Child Support

To calculate child support in Arizona, we place on the child support worksheet each spouse’s income and then there are various “credits” that are given.  The basic credits given are cost of health insurance.  If one parent is providing health insurance for the child he/she gets a credit for the cost of that health insurance.  Secondly, if the child is over 12 years of age, there’s a 10% charge because the cost of raising an older child is more expensive.  The next thing that is very important is parenting dates, in Arizona the non-residential parent gets a credit for parenting days.  Example, if you as the parent have the child every other weekend and one overnight a week, then basically your parenting credit would be 12 days per month or approximately 96 days a year.

Using Child Support Worksheets

We also take into consideration a week during winter break and perhaps two weeks during the summer and that would give you a credit of approximately 125 to 130 days.  We then go to a table to determine how much credit you get.  Keep in mind that the more parenting days you have, the bigger the credit and the less you pay in child support.  This is a dynamic that comes into play in many, many custody cases because the residential parent wants the child as much as possible thereby increasing the amount of child support that parent would receive.  Conversely, the non-residential parent wants to expand their parenting days knowing that the more parenting time they have the bigger the credit, the less they’ll pay in child support. Download General Child Support Guidelines Below: ]]>