Four internal inconsistencies in the worksheet’s own arithmetic, and one cross-jurisdiction comparison
Each finding below reproduces one part of the Massachusetts Child Support Guidelines Worksheet (form CJ-D 304, 2025 edition) in code, checks it against the form’s own embedded calculation scripts, and states what the arithmetic does that the guidelines’ own text does not say. The first three are internal; they hold regardless of what any particular family’s incomes are. The fourth compares Massachusetts’s order at one fact pattern against fifty other jurisdictions’ own guidelines, and is tiered accordingly: it generalizes to nothing beyond that one fact pattern.
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The hardship test reads a different income than the order pays from
Verified against the form's own calculation scripts
Section IV.C presumes hardship once an order reaches 40 percent of a payor's available income, but Line 7e computes that share on gross-derived income while the order itself is paid from net. At the worked example, the true burden already exceeds 40 percent of net income at $80 a week of claimed child care, while Line 7e does not report 40 percent until $590 a week, by which point the real share is 57 percent.
57% of the payor's net income at the worked example, at the point Line 7e itself still reads 40%
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Child care is split on income the order has already changed
Verified against the form's own calculation scripts
Line 3c allocates child care on each parent's income share before the base child support order has moved any money between the households. At the worked example this assigns 87.7 percent of a $15,600 child care bill to the payor; recomputing the shares after the transfer gives 64.5 percent, and after-tax shares give 48.2 percent.
88 cents of every dollar of claimed child care, funded by the payor at the worked example, on an income share computed before the order moves any money
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The credit for equal parenting time contains no parenting-time term
Verified against the form's own calculation scripts
Line 6g nets the two parents' Line 6e amounts, which reduce to the difference in their income shares once Box 1 assigns zero children to the payor's column; nothing in the calculation multiplies by any share of overnights. So the reduction the credit produces for equal parenting time collapses as the income gap between the parents widens: 77.6 percent at a 56.3 percent payor income share, 6.9 percent at the worked example's 87.7 percent, and 1.3 percent at 95.8 percent.
6.9% the reduction equal parenting time earns at the worked example, down from 77.6% when the other parent earns much less
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Massachusetts's equal-time order exceeds 47 of 49 other jurisdictions' primary orders
Tiered: one fact pattern, not a distribution; see method
At one fact pattern (three children, $201,000 and $29,640 a year, no child care), fifty of fifty-one jurisdictions were profiled from primary documents, computed twice independently, reconciled, and checked by an adversarial review; Georgia was held out because its enacted formula orders less at equal time than at primary custody. Comparing Massachusetts's own equal-time order against every other jurisdiction's primary-custody order at that pattern, only Hawaii and Wisconsin order more than Massachusetts does at equal time.
47 of 49 other ranked jurisdictions' primary-custody orders, exceeded by Massachusetts's own equal-time order at one fact pattern