Calculating Child Support

Colorado law specifies child support payments based on your income, the amount of time the child lives with each parent, your children's needs and your standard of living. In most divorce situations, both parents share a duty to support the children of the marriage. Child support orders can also be entered in cases in which one or both parents have filed for legal separation rather than dissolution of marriage (divorce) and when a family has broken up but no formal action for divorce or legal separation has been filed (juvenile support orders). In Colorado, how much each parent owes for support depends on how much time the child, or children spend with each parent—the custody arrangements.

You can use the Colorado Child Support Guideline and Bradford Publishing's Child Support Worksheets to help you calculate the proper amount of child support the parents will share in proportion to their individual incomes and expenses.

One of two Child Support Worksheets is used to calculate child support depending on the type of custody arrangement, Sole Physical Care or Shared Physical Care.

The worksheets are used to calculate how much the paying parent will owe in child support per month. The support order will take into consideration the monthly adjusted gross income of each parent, the percentage share for each parent, the basic support obligation from the Child Support Schedule and adjustments for expenses paid directly by each parent such as Child Care, Education, Health insurance, and extraordinary medical expenses.

If and when there are significant changes in parents’ incomes or the expenses for the children, it may be possible to seek an order for child support modification.

Colorado Child Support Guideline

This six-page informational document gives a broad explanation of the the Colorado Child Support Guideline detailed in the Colorado Statutes. It defines income and expenses, and discusses how to complete the necessary worksheets.
For more information, please click here: Colorado Child Support Guideline

Colorado Child Support Obligations

This schedule lists the basic amount of child support needed based on the number of children and income of both parents. This amount is placed on the appropriate worksheet to calculate the final amount of child support for each parent.
For more information, please click here: Colorado Child Support Obligations

Here we provide you some previews of our Colorado Child Support Legal Documents:

Colorado Child Support Guideline
(Revision Date: 1/1/2011)

Schedule of Basic Child Support Obligations
(Revision Date: 1/1/2011)