Legal Question in Family Law in California

California child support is based on 3 key factors: gross incomes of the parties, time share with the noncustodial parent and tax advantages/disadvantages. There are other limited factors the court will consider as set forth in the Family Code dealing with child support.

The formula for calculating child support is so complicated that the courts make it mandatory that you use an approved software program to come up with the numbers. There is more than one approved program last I looked, but everyone uses Dissomaster. Ms. Kock is mostly correct, but not entirely. It is not gross income, but rather "spendable" income that matters, and that is most of what the program calculates. The bottom line, however, is that there are over twenty input fields in the program and without knowing what numbers go in each one, or at least the key ones, we can't even guess at what the numbers would be. Without a percentage of custodial/visitation time with each parent, you can't even start.