Florida Child Support Calculator – Updated for 2024

Over the course of my career, I found that too many (if not all) online Florida Child Support Calculators fail to provide accurate results. The child support amount provided by these online child support calculators, in my opinion, does not reliably predict what a judge would order at a hearing. The judges use a far more complicated program. I have tried to replicate the Florida child support calculator portion of this program in my Florida Child Support Calculator. Even though all online Florida Child Support Calculators are based (or should be based) on the Florida Child Support Guidelines, the different results (which I have tried to correct for) come down to two main reasons:

1. Online calculators do not ask for your gross income. Instead, they ask for your net income and calculate child support from that number. While this is technically correct, it creates the biggest error in online child support calculation: your estimation of your net income almost never agrees with what the judge uses as your net income. The program that judges use in court asks for your gross income. The computer program will calculate your federal income tax based on your income and filing status (married, head of household, etc.). Your taxes (and other allowable deductions from income) are subtracted from your gross income to determine your net income – which is used to calculate your child support.
2. Many online calculators fail to take the number of nights that the children spend with each parent into account. Child support typically is reduced when the parent paying child support has over 20% of the night over the course of a year. While there are a few exceptions, as the paying parents nights increase, their child support obligation is reduced. The great majority of minority time sharing parents have more than 20% of the annual overnights. This is especially true now that equal time sharing is presumed (but not mandated) as of July 1, 2023.

The Solution – my Florida Child Support Calculator

My calculator determines/estimates your Federal Income Tax along with your FICA-Social Security and FICA-Medicare. I don’t know if you are eligible for various federal tax credits (Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, etc.). However, there is a place for you to enter the total amount of your tax credits (if you know that total from your tax return).

Lastly, I included a question that asks about the number of nights that the minority time share parent spends with the child(ren). This number must be between 0 and 182. If you enter “equal” as the majority time share parent, the calculator will assume that each parent has the child(ren) for 182.5 nights per year. In general, child support declines as the number of nights increases (although there are situations where this is not true).

This Florida Child Support Calculator is based on the 2024 federal tax code and the Florida Child Support Guidelines. At the end of the Florida Child Support Calculator, there is a way to receive the results via email. Please fee free to use this feature. I will not do any of the following: (1) sell or give away your name or email address, (2) put you on an email list, or (3) call, email or bother you in any way.