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How California child support works: the formula is IN the statute

California's guideline is a statutory formula — CS = K[HN − (H%)(TN)] — built on both parents' net disposable incomes, the high earner's share of parenting time, and the statutory K brackets, with fixed multipliers for multiple children. The statute even works its own example. Guideline support is presumptively correct; deviation requires findings.

The honesty note

Courts commonly run certified calculator tools on these same inputs; net disposable income has its own statutory deduction list, and a low-income adjustment presumption exists — the court's own calculation controls.

Authority locked — retrieved from the hash-pinned corpus

Cal. Fam. Code § 4055 · #d91f9b1fCal. Fam. Code § 4059 · #8bf84d37

Legal information, not legal advice. Statements about county practice defer to your superior court's local rules (CRC rule 5.4 territory) and the official self-help center — where this platform has no verified county data, it says so instead of guessing.