Glossary

Percentage of income model

A child support model that applies a fixed percentage to the paying parent's income and does not look at the other parent's income at all.

Texas is the best-known example. The guideline takes twenty percent of monthly net resources for one child, twenty-five for two, and so on up to forty percent, applied to income up to a statutory cap. The defining feature is what it ignores. The receiving parent's income plays no part in the calculation, so a page offering a field for it in a percentage-of-income state is either ignoring what you type or using a formula the state does not use. Most such states publish a second, lower schedule for low-income payers, and a multiple-household table that reduces the percentage where the payer supports children in other homes.

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