How Is Child Support Calculated in Texas?

Texas has rules referred to as the “guidelines” which determine how much child support can be paid in any situation. That said, these guidelines can be adjusted according to the unique needs of a family in some cases. A child support attorney in San Antonio can help you understand both the guidelines and how they will likely apply to your situation.

The guidelines set a minimum basic amount to be paid in child support. To deviate from this, the court will need to consider all the unique factors of your family. The guidelines look at the net monthly income of the paying parent and then compares that to one of two standards. The first is for use where the paying parent’s net monthly income is more than $7,500, and the second standard is for when the net monthly income is less than that.

Net income is the amount of income you earn after certain things have been deducted from it. To find your net income, you calculate your gross income (your actual total amount of money coming in) and then deduct any other child support you may be paying, all taxes, union dues, and any health insurance premiums that you’re paying for the child already. Gross income includes not only wages or salary but also all money coming from interest or dividends, royalties, rental income (net), self-employment income, severance pay, retirement benefits, pensions, unemployment, Social Security, and disability payments.

The guidelines require a paying parent who makes $7,500 or less per month in net income to pay 20% of their income if they’re supporting one child, 25% for two children, 30% for three children, 35% for four children, 40% for five children, and for six children or more, no less than 40% of their net monthly income. When a parent makes more than $7,500 in net monthly income, the same standard applies, but it’s much easier for the other parent to request more money for special needs of the child. These might include tuition for a nicer school, extra medical costs, or paying for extracurricular activities. However, the receiving parent must be able to prove that it’s in the best interests of the child to have these things before the court will be willing to go over the percentage maximums that normally apply.

If you share custody, then the court will strive to come up with an equitable division based on how much time each parent actually spends with the child. If both parents have a child for mostly equal amounts of time and have financial situations that are about the same, there will likely be no child support ordered. If one parent has significantly more income than the other, the court may order child support paid to the other parent, even if the parents share custody time equally. This is so the child’s standard of living is essentially the same no matter which parent they are living with.

The main factors the court will consider will anything major affecting the two parents or the child themselves. For example, if a child has special needs, whether medical or educational, this may warrant extra child support. If there is shared custody, as mentioned above, this may warrant less child support than the guidelines normally lay out. If there is a great income discrepancy between the two parents, or if the paying parent also has other children they must support, the court may order more or less child support than the guidelines would normally dictate.

Normally, child support ends when a child turns 18 or graduates from high school, whichever comes later. However, if a child requires continuing care because of a mental or physical disability, and if they are deemed incapable of self-support, then child support could be ordered indefinitely. If you believe that you are being wrongly required to pay child support in this situation and that your child is capable of earning money and managing their own financial affairs, then you can bring a case before the court to that effect.

For either parent to challenge a standing child support order, they must be able to prove that there’s been a significant change in circumstances. A change in circumstances might mean a change in the child’s circumstances, such as the development of a new disability or a serious illness, or it could be a substantial change to a parent’s circumstances.

If a parent has lost a job involuntarily, relocated, or developed a serious illness or disability, or if there’s been a change in the custody agreement, these might all be reasons to seek a change to support. In most cases, you cannot seek a change like this until the order has been in place for at least three years.

Retroactive child support can sometimes be ordered in cases where the paying parent has not been paying support at all. To determine whether this can happen, the court will look at what resources that parent had during the time that they should have been paying and were not.

They will also, assuming that the non-paying parent is a father, want to be sure that the mother made the father aware of his paternity, or at least the possibility of that paternity. In other words, a mother cannot normally sue for back child support if she never informed the father that he was a father. Finally, the court will also look at whether ordering back child support would put an undue hardship onto the father.

Common wisdom has it that mothers are always awarded custody while fathers are always forced to pay child support. While this does happen in many instances, this is not the presumption of the court. The courts determined custody and child support based on the unique factors of each family. The court goes into each situation assuming that the mother and father are equally capable of caring for the child and equal equally capable of supporting the child.

It is not legal under Texas law for a prenuptial agreement to address issues of child support. This is because child support is something that belongs to the child, not to the other parent. A prenuptial agreement allows two people to decide how they will manage their own personal finances, with relation to each other, in the event of a divorce. They cannot take from a potential future child the support that is owed to that child under the law.

The rules surrounding child support can be complicated and difficult. A child support attorney can help you understand how they apply to your situation and help you get the child support you need or fight back against an order for child support that will put you into hardship. Whatever your situation, reach out to us now at the HGC Law Firm, PLLC in San Antonio right away.