The Dangers of Online Child Support Calculators
Wednesday / June 06, 2007
Beware of online child support calculators unless
they are official.
A quick Google search for "child support calculators"
will present you with many results. Some of these
results are to official sites, while others are to
private sources. Although some private online child
support calculators might produce correct results,
others certainly do not. Here at The Child Support Web, we publish
links only to official online child support
calculators.
Who's to say that a particular child support calculator is correct or is not correct? If you use an official child support calculator, you at least have the assurance of knowing that the state thinks the calculator is correct. With private online calculators, you just do not know.
The lack of certainty is not just an idle fear. Today I read a blog entry touting a private child support calculator for Wyoming which, so far as I have been able to find, does not publish an official online child support calculator. So I decided to test the calculator.
Wyoming's child support guidelines are online. The guidelines say that you should add the two parents' net incomes, determine a percentage of income for child support, and then allocate the child support between the parents based on their net income. The noncustodial parent must then pay the custodial parent the noncustodial parent's share of child support.
Simple, right? Let's test it, and make it easy. The guidelines say that for a combined net income of $2,917, child support for one child equals $716. If the noncustodial parent nets $2,000 per month, and the custodial parent nets $917 per month, then the noncustodial parent should pay to the custodial parent (2,000 ÷ 2,917) × $716, which equals $490.92. But now let's use the online calculator for Wyoming mentioned in the blog entry. Again, let's make it simple. Put in $917 for the custodial parent and $2,000 for the noncustodial parent and zeroes for all the rest so that the online calculator's result should be the same as our hand calculations. But it isn't: The online calculator says that the noncustodial parent should pay only $391 per month. I'd suggest to you that an error of $100 month is considerable, especially given that the combined net income of both parents equals only $2,917.
Watch out for those unofficial online calculators.
Who's to say that a particular child support calculator is correct or is not correct? If you use an official child support calculator, you at least have the assurance of knowing that the state thinks the calculator is correct. With private online calculators, you just do not know.
The lack of certainty is not just an idle fear. Today I read a blog entry touting a private child support calculator for Wyoming which, so far as I have been able to find, does not publish an official online child support calculator. So I decided to test the calculator.
Wyoming's child support guidelines are online. The guidelines say that you should add the two parents' net incomes, determine a percentage of income for child support, and then allocate the child support between the parents based on their net income. The noncustodial parent must then pay the custodial parent the noncustodial parent's share of child support.
Simple, right? Let's test it, and make it easy. The guidelines say that for a combined net income of $2,917, child support for one child equals $716. If the noncustodial parent nets $2,000 per month, and the custodial parent nets $917 per month, then the noncustodial parent should pay to the custodial parent (2,000 ÷ 2,917) × $716, which equals $490.92. But now let's use the online calculator for Wyoming mentioned in the blog entry. Again, let's make it simple. Put in $917 for the custodial parent and $2,000 for the noncustodial parent and zeroes for all the rest so that the online calculator's result should be the same as our hand calculations. But it isn't: The online calculator says that the noncustodial parent should pay only $391 per month. I'd suggest to you that an error of $100 month is considerable, especially given that the combined net income of both parents equals only $2,917.
Watch out for those unofficial online calculators.
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