Glossary

Overnight

A night the child sleeps at a parent's home — the unit parenting time is counted in, and the one support guidelines key on.

Support guidelines that account for parenting time almost always count overnights rather than hours. The reason is practical: an overnight is unambiguous and provable from a calendar, where an argument about daytime hours rarely is. States treat the count differently. California builds a timeshare percentage directly into its formula, so overnights move the number continuously. Many income shares states adjust only once parenting time crosses a published threshold, which means one extra night can matter enormously at the boundary and not at all elsewhere. Some guidelines do not adjust for overnights at all, though a court may still treat parenting time as a reason to depart from the guideline.

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