Georgia child support calculator

Georgia starts from a simple idea: a child should receive the same share of parental income they would have if the parents lived together. So it does not look at one parent’s income alone. It combines both parents’ monthly adjusted income, finds the total the state expects them to spend on the children, and divides that total between them in proportion to what each earns.

“Adjusted income” is monthly gross income minus a handful of statutory items — half of self-employment taxes, preexisting child-support orders actually paid, and support for other qualified children. The combined figure drives the table lookup in the next section.

The Basic Child Support Obligation comes from the table in O.C.G.A. § 19-6-15(o) — indexed by combined monthly adjusted income and the number of children. Senate Bill 454, effective January 1, 2026, rewrote this table and raised the top of the schedule from $30,000 to $40,000 of combined monthly income. This calculator reads the actual 2026 table — 785 rows from $800 to $40,000 in $50 steps — so the figures match the statute to the dollar.

Above $40,000 combined monthly income the table ends and the court sets the amount case by case; this tool uses the top row and marks the result Approximate. At the low end, the low-income adjustment in § 4 keeps the order affordable.

Two costs are added on top of the basic obligation and split by income share: work-related child care and the children’s health insurance premium (Schedule D). If the noncustodial parent earns 60% of the combined income, they carry 60% of the basic obligation and 60% of these add-ons.

For lower earners, SB 454 added an automatic low-income adjustment (subsection (p)). If the paying parent’s own adjusted income is at or below $1,500 a month, the obligation is a fixed percentage of income (19% for one child up to 28% for six). Between $1,550 and each child-count’s ceiling — $2,450 for one child rising to $3,950 for six — the order is the lesser of the presumptive amount or the low-income table amount. This calculator applies whichever is lower automatically.

The biggest 2026 change: Georgia replaced the old discretionary parenting-time deviation with a mandatory parenting-time adjustment (subsection (g)(2), entered on Schedule C). Because the basic obligation table assumes an intact household, a parent with court-ordered time already covers some of those costs directly, so the formula credits it.

The statute raises each parent’s number of court-ordered days to the power of 2.5, uses those to weight each parent’s share of the basic obligation, and nets them. The result: the more court-ordered parenting time the paying parent has, the more the obligation drops — and where the custodial parent earns much more, it can even shift the net payment the other way. This calculator applies that exact formula from the court-ordered days you enter; with no court order awarding parenting time, no adjustment is made.

It computes the core 2026 income-shares calculation — combined income, the BCSO table, income-share proration, the mandatory parenting-time adjustment, the health-insurance and child-care add-ons, and the low-income adjustment. It does not handle every worksheet item: split-parenting and multiple-family arrangements, credits for other qualified children, Social Security dependent benefits, uninsured medical (future medical) costs, income imputed to an underemployed parent, or a specific deviation a judge grants. For a figure you can file, use the official Georgia Child Support Commission worksheet or consult an attorney.