Disclaimer: This child support calculator is for informational purposes only. The Court will decide itself how much of child support you’ll have to pay or receive. Our calculator try to take into consideration as many factors as possible, and is made based on the most recent Guidelines, but the Court will set the final amount.
Calculating Child Support in New Jersey
In New Jersey, the law states that both a child’s parents must financially support them. If the parents were married, the child would have been provided for by both parents. The law wants to mimic the same approach and have both parents combining their resources to support the child. The court uses a combined income model that combines the parents’ net incomes to determine how much the non-custodial parent must pay in child support.
Net Income Definition
Both of the child’s parents must understand how their net income is calculated. It is, after all, this that determines the child support amount. Child support guidelines Appendix IX-B defines this clearly. Firstly, the court will determine the parents’ gross income. This is all their earned (and unearned) income and generally includes bonuses, gains from selling property, tips, regular compensation, and business gains. Social security, alimony, workers’ compensation, disability payments, unemployment benefits and severance pay is also considered when calculating gross income. Then, the net income is calculated by subtracting certain expenses, such as alimony, union dues and taxes.
Applying for Child Support in New Jersey
The New Jersey Child Support Agency deals with child support cases in New Jersey. The CSA is a division of the New Jersey Department of Human Services.
Applying for child support in New Jersey requires you to contact your local child support county office. Most cities in the state will have such an office that you can reach out and get help.
Once you have made contact, you will have to fill out an application. You can get this application online or from the Family Court, Board of Social Services or Welfare Office in your county.
When you submit your application, you have to pay a once-off non-refundable fee of $6. Your fee will be waived if you’re getting public assistance.
It is possible to ask for full child support or only partial services in the state of New Jersey.
Full services:
- Finding the non-custodial parent
- Determining paternity
- Medical support
- Monitoring of the case
Partial services will only include one or a few of the services mentioned above. For each service, you will have to pay a fee of $6. For the monitoring service, you will pay $25 a year.
Child Support Modification in New Jersey
You can make a change to a child support agreement in New Jersey. Changes may be desired when circumstances have changed for one or both parents. In most cases, the circumstantial changes will be linked to the above-mentioned factors.
As an example of changes that can be made, consider the case of two parents who have a joint child custody agreement. The custodial parent lost their job and this could be valid grounds for a modification. The custodial parent would then pay less towards the support of their child/children.
To successfully make changes to an existing child custody agreement, the parents involved must petition family courts in New Jersey for a hearing. Proof of the changes in circumstances must then be offered.