Child Support Calculation

We don't recalculate at any kind of time interval, only if there's been a "material change." It isn't worth the filing fees and attorney charges to have the support raised or lowered by a few dollars a month.

I asked for support to be recalculated several times in the first couple of years of our separation-->divorce because we were in court anyway, so like pp said, might as well. Parenting time and custody was being reworked constantly so it always made sense to rerun the calculator with the new amounts.

I ended up having full physical custody of my son and ultimately moved out of state with him, so we calculated it one last time to reflect that and it's stayed that way for the past few years. His father certainly makes more money now than he did then, BUT he's gotten good and paying the set amount regularly, and I'm not strapped for cash, so the amount he pays seems like a reasonable contribution to the support of his son (the bulk of it ends up in a college savings each month, actually) so I don't see the point in filing a new motion... plus, we don't even LIVE in the state that does the support anyway, so it'd be a hassle...

No, I don't ask for his tax returns. I don't ask to see his income. (although he's a public employee so if I was interested, I could look it up on his salary schedule).

We have been divorced for over six years and have never recalculated.

I just wanted to add here, you have to ask for it to be recalculated. Because of the nature of employment the percentages shouldn't change to a level that would be considered material. Pretty much if one gets a huge promotion that could do it but otherwise we both get lame raises so the percentage stays the same.

Every state differs in how often they will conduct a review and of course, the divorce decree can contain a stipulation that you both agree on. In my state, the guidelines call for a review when:

the existing order is at least three years old;
health insurance previously available at reasonable cost is no longer available (or if available but not at reasonable cost);
health insurance not previously available to a party at reasonable cost has
become available;
or a material change in circumstances has occurred

There used to be a requirement that for a change to be considered "material" it had to result in a recalculated support order that was at least 20% different from the existing order but that part was lifted and now it's more discretionary.

Keep in mind that for a change to become official, it requires that the order be modified by the court, which is time and money for everyone involved. It doesn't make sense to review this very often unless something substantial changes.

ETA and keep in mind that the same court process that modifies a child support order modifies custody and visitation/parenting time. In our case, we were very vocal in letting my SD's mother know that if she dragged us into court for an increase in child support, we'd use that opportunity to file for custody or increased visitation because heck if we're there anyway... That's also the reason that now that we have custody, we haven't bothered to drag her mother to court for child support. No sense having her put up a custody fight over a small amount of money. We'll let that dog sleep.

The state takes care of collecting the child support for me and they usually will go and recalculate it IF I call and ask them when they do it.

I think that unless the ex's wages go up or down quite a bit they don't take it back to court to get the court order changed.

It is costly to them to go to court so they have a range of incomes where it stays the same. If your ex. got a great paying job and is making double his past salary they need to know you want them to review it.

If it's not more than a few thousand more I wouldn't waste the time because it would be too costly to them to do that every time his wage went up or down just a bit.