How Florida Calculates Child Support

Florida uses the Income Shares model to determine child support obligations. This page explains the guidelines, formula, and key factors.

Model Type

Income Shares (Fla. Stat. § 61.30)

Florida looks up a basic obligation from the schedule written into § 61.30(6) by combined monthly net income and number of children, then splits it by each parent's share of income. Once BOTH parents have at least 73 overnights a year, a different formula becomes mandatory: the obligation is multiplied by 1.5 and divided by both income share and time share.

Sources & Verification

Core formula verified; some gaps disclosed below

Guideline effective 2023-07-01 · last checked against the primary source 2026-09-20

Primary sources

Fla. Stat. § 61.30 — Child support guidelines (schedule at § 61.30(6))Florida Supreme Court Approved Family Law Form 12.902(e) — Child Support Guidelines Worksheet

What this calculator doesn't yet handle

The 185-row schedule was parsed from the Legislature's rendering of § 61.30(6) and cross-checked cell-for-cell against the Florida Supreme Court's form 12.902(e) (Rev. 06/25) — all 1,110 cells agree. The increment is a uniform $50 across the whole table.
Between-row combined net income is floored to the schedule row at or below the exact figure. § 61.30 gives no interpolation or rounding instruction, and the official worksheet's instructions answer the question circularly, so this is a documented judgment call — the same convention used for Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
Net income is entered directly rather than estimated from gross. § 61.30(3)(a) defines the income-tax deduction as the litigant's own figures 'adjusted for actual filing status and allowable dependents,' and Florida publishes no tax table, no default filer profile, and no agency conversion chart. The result is only as accurate as the net figures entered.
The substantial-time-sharing threshold is 20% of overnights (73 nights), per ch. 2010-199 effective 2011-01-01. A great deal of Florida practitioner material, older calculators, and secondary summaries still describe the superseded 40% / 146-overnight rule.
Child care is added at 100% of the entered cost. The 25% reduction was repealed by ch. 2008-61 effective 2008-10-01, but many Florida calculators and law-firm pages still apply it. The statute's 'level required to provide quality care from a licensed source' cap is a fact question and is surfaced as help text rather than enforced.
Crossing the 73-overnight threshold can increase support rather than reduce it — whenever the paying parent's income share exceeds three times their time share, which at the threshold means any obligor earning more than 60% of combined net income. This is a real, widely-litigated consequence of the 1.5 multiplier and is reported rather than smoothed over.
Florida has no self-support reserve, no low-income shaded band, and no statutory minimum order, unlike most states on this site. The only low-income mechanism is § 61.30(6)(a), which keys on the obligor's own net income falling below $800.
When the obligor's net income is below the $800 schedule floor, § 61.30(6)(a) directs a case-by-case amount rather than a formula, and its 90%-of-income-above-poverty cap is structurally inert (it can only trigger below $800, which is already under the one-person poverty guideline, so it always evaluates negative). This calculator shows the ordinary proportional share with a prominent notice rather than inventing a minimum, and § 61.30(6)(a)2.'s internally circular cross-reference to subparagraph 1. is not resolved.
Combined net income below $800 has no rule in § 61.30 at all — (6)(a) addresses the obligor's income, not the combined figure — so no guideline amount is stated in that range.
Above the $10,000 ceiling, § 61.30(6)(b)'s percentage formula is computed and returned rather than deferred to discretion, since Florida (unlike Kentucky or South Carolina) supplies a real formula with no upper bound.
Not implemented: imputed income (§ 61.30(2)(b), materially tightened in 2021), the Social Security derivative-benefit credit (§ 61.30(10)(b), which also requires adding the benefit to gross income first), split custody, and the discretionary downward adjustment for significant time-sharing below 20% of overnights (§ 61.30(11)(a)10.). The eleven § 61.30(11)(a) deviation factors and the ±5% variance allowed without written findings are disclosed, not predicted.