New Jersey Child Support Calculator

Choose how many children this order covers and your parenting arrangement. Select Shared Parenting if overnights are substantially split, then enter the number of overnights per year with the paying parent.

Enter each parent's annual gross income, then the New Jersey worksheet adjustments. The calculator subtracts alimony paid, prior child support orders, and mandatory deductions, adds any alimony received, and applies an other-dependent deduction to reach each parent's adjusted income before sharing the support obligation.

“Other legal dependents” are children the parent supports who are not part of this case. Use net (after-tax) income for the most accurate result, or gross for a quick estimate.

Taxes are now built in. This calculator applies the official Appendix IX-H Combined Tax Withholding Tables (federal, New Jersey, Social Security and Medicare, weekly, single / married-living-apart, effective January 1, 2026) to convert each parent’s gross income to net income, exactly as the worksheet does. Enter each parent’s number of IRS W-4 withholding allowances (0 if unsure) so the tax estimate is accurate. The withholding figures are estimates — unusual income types (self-employment, large investment income) are not fully captured and should be confirmed by our office.

Work-related child care and the children's share of health insurance are added on top of the basic support obligation and split between the parents by income share.

The self-support reserve protects a low-income paying parent: if paying the calculated support would leave them below 150% of the federal poverty level (about $460/week net, effective 2026) for one person, the order is reduced so they keep that reserve (down to the guideline minimum). It only affects low-income cases. Leave it on to follow the guidelines.

True 50/50 custody — Wunsch-Deffler (“Deffler”) credit: When parenting time is split equally (about 175–190 overnights each), New Jersey’s Shared-Parenting Worksheet (Appendix IX-D) uses the Wunsch-Deffler calculation. Because the paying parent already covers variable expenses (food, transportation, entertainment) and a share of fixed costs directly during their own equal parenting time, only the children’s controlled expenses (clothing, personal care, and similar items the primary-residence parent buys) transfer between homes. This keeps the higher earner from being overcharged. This calculator now runs the full Appendix IX-D Shared-Parenting Worksheet (Lines 1–35): it re-grosses fixed expenses for two households (Line 11), credits the paying parent’s variable expenses (Line 14), and nets each parent’s obligation. Set custody to “Shared” and enter the paying parent’s overnights — the worksheet is used whenever that parent has at least 28% of overnights. The expense percentages and resulting figures are estimates and should be confirmed by our office.

High combined income: New Jersey’s Appendix IX-F schedule stops at a combined net income of $3,600/week (about $187,200/year). The courts do not extrapolate the schedule beyond that point (Appendix IX-A ¶20b). When combined net income is higher, this calculator applies the guideline at the $187,200 ceiling and adds a discretionary supplement on the income above it, allocated by income share. That supplement is set at the court’s discretion based on the statutory factors (N.J.S.A. 2A:34-23a) and the family’s actual circumstances — the figure shown here is only an estimate to confirm with our office.

A child away at college: The guidelines are written for children under 18 (or 18+ still in high school). Under Appendix IX-A ¶18, the IX-F schedule is not used to set support for a child living away at college, because many of those costs (room, board, transportation) would otherwise be duplicated between two households. Enter how many children live away at college above — they are removed from the on-guideline count, and their college contribution is decided separately by the court. A student who instead commutes from home may, at the court’s discretion, stay in the guideline count, so leave that child out of the “away at college” field.