The Massachusetts Child Support Guidelines, checked against federal law and the form’s own code
The state’s guidelines can set child support higher than federal law lets the state collect from wages.
Federal law requires every child support order to rest on the parent’s ability to pay. The Worksheet never computes what a parent keeps after tax, and federal law never says what ability to pay means once the basics are met. The excess above what federal law lets the state collect from wages is still owed.
No court or federal agency has ruled on whether the guidelines meet this standard. Federal approval of the state’s plan has not addressed it.
At one worked example ($201,000 and $29,640 a year, three children), Massachusetts orders more for joint custody than any other state, and more than primary custody costs in 47 states.
Shares of income pairs on a model grid, three children, primary custody, $100 a week of child care per child.
Monthly order, the same two incomes and three children in every state.
$201,000 and $29,640 a year, three children, equal parenting time, no child care. Each state's amount comes from its own guidelines, worked out twice and checked for errors. One worked example; the full fifty-state ranking is further down the page.
Source: model/charts/fig5_states.py ·
data (CSV)
A tested port of the Worksheet and the tax model runs in your browser — it does not look anything up in a precomputed table.
Starts at $100 a week per child, $300 a week for three children, paid by the lower earner. Move the sliders or switch child care off.
Weekly order (Line 7d)
$1,276/wk
What the hardship test reports (Line 7e)
33.4%
True share of the payor's net income
46.4%
Payor keeps after tax, per year
$76,768/yr
Recipient household holds after tax, per year
$88,710/yr
Per person: $22,177/yr
Above the payor
Change from no child care
+$263/wk
What the higher earner pays of the other parent's child care, per year
$13,678/yr
Higher earner’s share of the child care
87.7% →
As the Worksheet splits it today.
The Worksheet charges the higher earner 87.7% ($13,678/yr) of the child care, while they hold 64% of the money after the order on paper and 53% of it after tax.
This tool counts the refundable tax credits, to show what they do. Every published figure elsewhere on this site leaves them out, because they depend on which parent claims which child and the Worksheet has no field for that. Choose "leave them out" to put this tool on the same basis as the rest of the site. The four credits, with a source for each, are on the credits page.
Box 2 puts the children primarily with the lower earner, who receives, while the
higher earner pays. Child care above is a combined weekly total per parent, capped at
$430 per child; switching the Child care section on already reflects it in the order and
in the after-tax figures above. The MA Child and Family Tax Credit for children under 13
is fixed at zero throughout, the same convention as every income-range chart on this
site. This calculator models Massachusetts only; no other state's worksheet is
implemented here. Method:
model/worksheet.py and
model/net_position.py, ported and
tested in assets/js/lib/worksheet.js
and assets/js/calculator.test.js.
The Child care section's three rules all come from
model/childcare_post_transfer.py:
"On gross income, before the order" is today's Line 6b; "On net income, after the
order," the rule this project asks for (new Worksheet Line 6b-1), allocates on each
parent's share of the money after tax and FICA at the no-child-care order, leaving out
the refundable credits CJ-D 304 has no field for; "On gross income, after the order," the
fallback if the Worksheet cannot compute tax (new Line 6b-2), allocates on each parent's
resulting share of income once the base order is set, instead of their share beforehand.
Both of the last two move the order itself, the same way.
The tax model uses the same income the Worksheet uses, not a filer's actual modified adjusted gross income. A payor whose real return also counts bonuses or vested stock could sit further into the Child Tax Credit phase-out than this tool shows. The simplification runs one way: it can credit the payor with more money after tax than he actually gets, never less.
The worked example throughout runs a fixed family of two parents' incomes and three children. I pay child support in Massachusetts myself, so I have a stake in the outcome. It doesn't change the finding: the same gaps hold across the ranges charted on every finding page.
Every number traces to model/worksheet.py, checked by model/test_worksheet.py against the form's own scripts. Run it on any numbers you choose.
The highest joint-custody support in the nation
The same two incomes and three children in every state ($201,000 and $29,640 a year, no child care), worked out from each state's own guidelines and checked twice. Every place that costs more to live in orders less at equal time: the cost-of-living comparison.
The same two incomes and three children, in every state.
Monthly order: Massachusetts under Box 1 (children half the time each) against every other jurisdiction with the children primarily with the lower earner.
Only Hawaii and Wisconsin order more at primary custody than Massachusetts does at equal time; Massachusetts's own primary-custody order, $4,714, is marked for scale and is not part of the ranked comparison.
Source: model/charts/fig10_ma_shared_vs_primary.py ·
data (CSV)
Ranked against each other, Massachusetts orders the most of the fifty at equal time (the chart at the top of this page), and at primary custody only Hawaii orders more:
The same two incomes and three children, in every state.
Monthly order at one set of incomes, read beside the chart at the top of the page.
The same family with the children primarily with the lower earner. Hawaii's design is shared with Delaware and Montana; at this income gap it exhausts the self-support reserve (the income floor a worksheet protects for the payor) differently from an income-shares schedule (the combined-income method most states, including Massachusetts, use). Same states and same colors as E11, so the two can be read side by side.
Source: model/charts/fig5_states.py ·
data (CSV)
The federal ceiling
Federal law caps what can be withheld from a paycheck for support at 60 percent of take-home pay, less for a payor with a second family. With no child care claimed, no income pair on our model grid crosses it. At $100 a week of child care per child, 40 percent of three-child, primary-custody income pairs on the grid have an order that takes more than half of take-home pay, and 10.6 percent cross the 60 percent limit itself: the federal-law finding.
Share of income pairs whose order is above the federal limit on wage withholding, by child care claimed per child per week.
Three children. Federal limit on wage withholding, 15 U.S.C. § 1673(b)(2): 60 percent of take-home pay, less for a payor with a second family. With no child care claimed, no income pair on the grid crosses it.
Source: model/ccpa_grid.py ·
data (CSV)
The five that carry the argument. All of them are worked through on the findings page.
What the Worksheet’s hardship test reports, in percent
What the order really takes of the payor’s take-home pay at that point
Every income pair, run through the Worksheet
Federal law requires an order based on ability to pay. The Worksheet never computes take-home pay, and with child care claimed it sets orders above the federal withholding ceiling.
The same two incomes and three children → sortable table
Fifty jurisdictions, each worked out from its own guidelines and checked twice for errors.
Verified against the form's own scripts → live tool above
Line 7e exists to catch an order that takes too much. It measures against one income. The order is paid out of another.
Verified against the form's own scripts
Base support moves money from one parent to the other. Line 3c then splits the child care on the shares from before it moved.
Verified against the form's own scripts
Going from a third of the nights to half takes 6.9% off the order here. At the same two incomes, Utah cuts it by 55%, Montana and Hawaii by 52%.
After 18: Massachusetts can keep child support running to 23 and pays it to the other parent, even while the child is at college and a parent is paying for it. Read the finding →
One worked example (three children, $201,000 and $29,640 a year); Massachusetts pinned at the top. † New York exceeds its $193,000 schedule; the rate above that is discretionary.
Massachusetts: $4,388/mo equal parenting (rank 1 of 50), $4,714/mo primary custody (rank 2 of 50).
| Massachusetts | $4,388/mo | $4,714/mo |
| New York † | $4,068/mo | $4,068/mo |
| New Hampshire | $3,839/mo | $3,839/mo |
| Texas | $3,510/mo | $3,510/mo |
| Missouri | $3,139/mo | $3,139/mo |
| Connecticut | $3,138/mo | $3,138/mo |
| Wisconsin | $3,117/mo | $4,492/mo |
| New Jersey | $3,002/mo | $3,002/mo |
| North Dakota | $2,939/mo | $3,219/mo |
| Maine | $2,899/mo | $2,899/mo |
| Washington | $2,820/mo | $2,820/mo |
| Hawaii | $2,774/mo | $5,821/mo |
| Rhode Island | $2,684/mo | $3,123/mo |
| Colorado | $2,652/mo | $3,090/mo |
| Iowa | $2,630/mo | $3,745/mo |
| Ohio | $2,564/mo | $2,564/mo |
| California | $2,424/mo | $3,436/mo |
| Pennsylvania | $2,378/mo | $3,087/mo |
| Alaska | $2,368/mo | $3,463/mo |
| Maryland | $2,310/mo | $3,295/mo |
| Kansas | $2,297/mo | $3,838/mo |
| Indiana | $2,283/mo | $2,548/mo |
| Delaware | $2,281/mo | $3,991/mo |
| District of Columbia | $2,254/mo | $3,468/mo |
| Louisiana | $2,227/mo | $3,269/mo |
| Arkansas | $2,119/mo | $2,350/mo |
| Mississippi | $2,097/mo | $2,565/mo |
| Wyoming | $1,901/mo | $2,802/mo |
| North Carolina | $1,883/mo | $2,934/mo |
| Illinois | $1,881/mo | $3,038/mo |
| Virginia | $1,872/mo | $2,672/mo |
| Nevada | $1,843/mo | $2,485/mo |
| Tennessee | $1,833/mo | $2,031/mo |
| South Carolina | $1,832/mo | $2,669/mo |
| New Mexico | $1,824/mo | $2,795/mo |
| Idaho | $1,794/mo | $2,550/mo |
| South Dakota | $1,789/mo | $2,623/mo |
| Alabama | $1,746/mo | $2,736/mo |
| Florida | $1,735/mo | $2,513/mo |
| West Virginia | $1,724/mo | $2,519/mo |
| Vermont | $1,686/mo | $2,594/mo |
| Nebraska | $1,475/mo | $2,402/mo |
| Montana | $1,461/mo | $3,074/mo |
| Michigan | $1,445/mo | $2,808/mo |
| Arizona | $1,309/mo | $2,290/mo |
| Oklahoma | $1,284/mo | $2,009/mo |
| Minnesota | $1,175/mo | $2,271/mo |
| Kentucky | $1,088/mo | $1,872/mo |
| Oregon | $1,072/mo | $1,772/mo |
| Utah | $1,058/mo | $2,333/mo |
Georgia is not ranked above: its enacted formula orders less at equal time than at primary custody, a result the state's own calculator reproduces (see the jurisdiction finder's "Georgia (held out)" option).
Data: fig5_states.csv,
New York's cap from fig9_schedule_ceilings.csv
· full method.
model/test_worksheet.py;
printed run.model/childcare_post_transfer.py and
its tests.model/box1_fix.py and its
tests.model/charts/fig5_states.py.