Calculating monthly incomes for child support: It is common to use the year-to-date amounts on the paychecks when calculating child support, especially since law specifically states you can do this. However There is a flaw with this method. For example, if a doctor tells you to take 4 pills every hour, how long will it take to consume these pills? The answer is 3 hours, not 4. This is because 1 pill is consumed immediately, the 2nd pill in 1 hour and so on. The same is true for year to date payments, especially when paid twice a month, as the first paycheck for the month of January includes payment for work done in December of the previous year. This can easily raise your support obligation by a considerable amount since it will result in moving the combined income up 1 or more levels on the table. For every $1200, it will bump the combined income up one bracket and increase your percentage of the obligation (a double impact). It is also poor ethics for lawyers to add an additional payment on the end of the year-to-date income to include the first paycheck of January for the next year conveniently forgetting about the "extra" paycheck included at the beginning of the year.

It is also often the case where lawyers have their own in house support calculators which may have flaws or bugs and give incorrect results. You can always expect these "flawed" calculators to return higher results when the lawyers represent custodial parents and the reverse for lawyers representing the noncustodial parent. At this point, you should weigh the cost of your own attorney in arguing this point. Regardless, you should always comment on the flawed calculations, something like "those numbers do not match up with the what the guidelines state in Title 78 Chapter 45."