California Child Support Overview

Informative guides for parents who search for answers

California Child Support Guides

Bring up the topic of child support, and some parents cringe. The parent who seeks it stresses about the process of getting child support. The parent who may have to pay it stresses about how he or she can afford child support. Men and women often fear the unknown and child support sometimes feels like the great unknown in family law.

That is ironic considering our California legislature believes it has simplified the entire child support process. Child support is after all based on a guideline formula. Court and judges rely on computer software programs to determine the guideline child support amount. Sounds easy, right?

Sometimes it is easy. If you take two W-2 wage earners (or one wage earner and one homemaker) and no disputes regarding the amount of parenting time, child support can be as easy as plugging in some information into the computer software program and getting a child support number.

But what about one parent who is self-employed? A parent who refuses to work? Disputes regarding actual parenting time? What about disputes regarding childcare and how that should be factored into the child support amount? How about the question of health insurance and how that may impact the child support amount? What about the issue of mandatory or discretionary retirement deducted from income and its impact on child support? And what qualifies as a hardship deduction? What justifies deviation from the child support guideline formula upward or downward?

Sometimes it is simple. Sometimes it is not. Fortunately, our California child support guides provide you with our laws and procedures on child support. Our guides walks you through the procedural steps to both obtain child support and defend against an unreasonable request. Our child support guides also provide you with important sections of California child support law.

Our guides are not a substitute for legal representation. They are not intended as legal advice. They are intended to provide you with detailed, general information that will help you better understand how the California child support process and laws work from start to finish.

If you want to learn more about child support, you owe it to yourself to read our child support guides

We hope you enjoy our pages on child support and we welcome your feedback on anything you read within them. You may access them by navigating to the child support link that you will find at the top of our website or simply click on the links below.