Legal Question in Family Law in California

I suggest speaking to the Family Law Facilitator's office at the court where your case is filed. You need to have a dissomaster calculated to determine guideline support. If your figures are correct, it will tell you the correct amount of child support. At that point, you should make the decision whether or not to retain an attorney.

I ran the numbers you gave through DissoMaster. Now bear in mind that you have given no where near complete information necessary to properly run a DissoMaster calculation, but you have given enough to come up with a "back of the envelope number." IF he is paying $400/mo. in child care when she is with him and you do not pay for any child care, and IF the income numbers you gave are right, and IF the other inputs needed for a full Dissomaster Calculation would not change things, you should be getting $209/mo. That is based on him owing you $409/mo, but being entitled to deduct 1/2 the child care. That also assumes he does not have any allowable deductions from his income, such as union dues, health insurance, etc. If he has $300/mo in those kinds of deductions, your support right now is correct. If you and he agreed to apply "tactic 9" in which you sign over your right to the tax deduction for her to him. His support would got up to $209, but his taxes would go down by $116/mo. So that would be a win-win for both of you. Again, however, these numbers are just estimates. The real numbers will be different and you must exchange and use Income and Expense Declarations to get the real numbers.