Stockburger/Braver Standard of Living Child Support Calculator

Use the Child Support Calculator

• What is it?  The calculator is an Excel spreadsheet that calculates and compares net income and standard of living for custodial and non-custodial parents after federal and state taxes and child support transfers. It calculates federal income tax, child support, and state income tax for seven different states and five different cost of living indices.
• Why was it written?  The program was originally designed and written for a chapter entitled "Child Support Guidelines and the Equalization of Living Standards" by Sanford L. Braver and David W. Stockburger to appear in Comanor, W. (in press) The Law and Economics of Child Support.  Please see this source for additional information and documentation.  It is our desire to make our calculations publicly available to others.
• Who wrote it?  The program was a collaborative effort of Sanford L. Braver and David W. Stockburger.  Dr. Braver is the coauthor of Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths and a professor of Psychology at Arizona State University.  Dr. Stockburger is an emeritus professor of Psychology at Southwest Missouri State University and is the author of Introductory Statistics: Concepts, Models, and Applications.
• Details
• The program is comprised of a number of Excel worksheets that have been converted to to files that may be viewed on a web browser and requires Internet Explorer 4.0^TM or greater to run. The different spreadsheets may be accessed by clicking on the arrow on the bottom tab and selecting the desired worksheet.
• The "Input" worksheet allows the user to change the values for many of the variables in the worksheets.  NCP stands for "non-custodial parent" and CP for "custodial parent" in all the worksheets. The "Intact" values, while affecting many of the state worksheets, currently do not affect the summary "Output" sheet.



• The "Annual Income" is gross income from all sources.  The "Children under 13" and "Children over 13" should add up to the total number of children that are included in the child support worksheets. The "Health Insurance" and "Other Ordered Expenses" should describe the amounts paid monthly by each parent. The "Percent Time" of the NCP and CP should sum to 100. The "Itemized Deductions" contain the amount of the itemized deductions on the federal tax forms. If these values are zero or less than the standard deduction, the standard deduction will be used in tax calculations. The "Dependents" are the number of children claimed on the income tax forms.  Generally these will be the same as the total number of children claimed for child support, but the program allows calculations when the children are claimed as dependents by the non-custodial parent.  The "Filing Status" will either be a 1 -  "Single", 2 - "Head of Household", or 3 - "Married filing jointly". Five different standard of living indices may be used, as described in the chapter in the book.  The default and recommended choice is 1 - "FSF".
• The output is summarized in the "Output" worksheet. Each state is presented as a row and the values are monthly amounts.

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• The "Federal Tax" is obtained from the "US_Tax" worksheet and the "SOL Index" is from the "SOL" worksheet.  The "Corrected for SOL" values are found by dividing the " Net after Tax and Child Support" by the corresponding " SOL Index" values.  The "% NCP/CP" is found by dividing the net NCP income by the net CP income.  If this percentage is greater then 100%, then the non-custodial parent enjoys a higher standard of living then the custodial parent.  If this percentage is less than 100%, then the custodial parent enjoys a higher standard of living.

• In the study described in the book chapter, the "% NCP/CP" percentage was set at 100% and the resulting gross income of the custodial parent was found for different non-custodial parent gross incomes, children, and time spent with the non-custodial parent.
• The other worksheets compute specific information for state child support or taxes.  For example, the "MO_CS" worksheet computes the child support for the state of Missouri. The "Input" values change the computations, while the "Output" values present the results of the computations. The "Input" values on the "SOL" worksheet allow the user to experiment with various alternative parameters for the different standard of living calculations.
• Caveats The worksheets were designed for research purposes and are not for use in calculating child support or taxes for legal or other purposes.  The worksheets contain fairly complex computations. Although we have tried to work carefully and check our values against other programs, it is not possible to check all possible combinations of values.  If you use these programs, you do so at your own risk. as we can accept no legal liability for their use. The federal and state tax codes are complex and contain nuances that we have no knowledge. For example, some states allow only certain portions of the federal itemized deductions. A similar warning must be issued with respect to the state child support calculations. If you are aware of any errors or omissions, please let us know.
• Additional states, comparisons, and computations are possible, but require considerable programming effort. Please contact David Stockburger for consultation.

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  Last modified - November, 2004