If you have a child and are going to be getting divorced, you and your spouse will need to work out how much child support is necessary in your case. The amount of child support paid should be determined by looking at a number of factors, such as who will have primary custody or if joint custody will be used, your child’s specific needs and both of your incomes.
South Carolina does have a child support calculator that can help you get a ballpark figure for how much child support you or the other parent should expect to pay.
Using a child support calculator to determine support obligations
It is possible to use a child support calculator to get an estimation of how much child support should be paid. South Carolina’s calculator requires you to fill in some of the following information:
- How many children will be included in the support order
- Who has custody (mother, father, split, shared or another person)
- The percentage of time the child spends with each parent
- How many nights your child spends with each parent
- Each parent’s monthly gross income
- Any alimony paid or received
- How many other children are in the home and not a part of this action
- Child care costs
- Health insurance premium costs
- The Child Care Tax Credit
These and a few other pieces of information are then used to work out how much you’ll pay in support. For example, if there is one child in a shared custody arrangement where a mother has custody 183 nights and a father has custody 182 nights, the amount of support may be low. The calculator looks at the monthly gross income. If the father’s income is $2,500 and the mother’s is $3,000 with no other factors applied, the mother will pay around $55 a month. The calculator is extremely useful in obtaining a rough estimation of what you might have to pay.
