Free online child support calculators are easy to find. They’re also frequently wrong, and not because the math is bad. Most are still running on Connecticut’s old income schedule, which the state replaced on August 1, 2026. If you bookmarked a calculator last year or read an article about how child support is calculated in Connecticut, there’s a real chance the number you’re working from no longer reflects current law.
That gap matters. The revised Connecticut child support guidelines expanded the income schedule by 50 percent, changed how courts treat imputed income, and introduced an entirely new worksheet for certain cases. For families in Stamford, Westport, and the surrounding Fairfield County communities, these changes are particularly significant: dual professional incomes in this area frequently approached or exceeded the old $4,000 weekly cap, leaving courts with little formal guidance on how to handle the excess. That changed on August 1, 2026.
Our attorneys at Siegel, Colin, & Kaufman include a former Connecticut Superior Court Judge who presided over family division cases in the Stamford/Norwalk Judicial District for years. That perspective shapes how we read a guideline worksheet, and it’s behind everything that follows.
The Income Shares Model: Connecticut’s Starting Point
Connecticut calculates child support using the Income Shares Model, built on a straightforward premise: a child should receive the same proportion of combined parental income they would have received if both parents lived together. Neither parent’s income is ignored. Both count.
In practice, both parents complete the Worksheet for the Connecticut Child Support and Arrearage Guidelines, form CCSG-1, alongside a sworn financial affidavit. The worksheet starts with gross income from all sources and works down to a net weekly income figure by subtracting allowable deductions: federal and state income taxes, FICA contributions, and mandatory retirement contributions, among others. What’s left after those deductions is the number that gets matched to the schedule. Getting that deduction calculation right matters, because even modest differences in net weekly income can shift the obligation by a meaningful amount.
What the August 1, 2026 Guideline Update Actually Changed
The most consequential change in the 2026 revision is the expansion of the Schedule of Basic Child Support Obligations. The old schedule topped out at $4,000 in combined net weekly income, roughly $208,000 annually. The updated schedule runs to $6,000 per week, approximately $312,000 annually. That’s the first expansion in over a decade, and it directly affects families in Stamford, Greenwich, Darien, and Westport whose combined incomes previously exceeded the schedule’s ceiling.
The 2026 update also addressed two other issues worth knowing:
- A new CCSG-1A worksheet was introduced to handle cases involving more than two legally recognized parents, a change connected to the Connecticut Parentage Act’s recognition of multi-parent families.
- Imputed income rules were tightened. Courts must now weigh specific criteria before attributing income to a parent they believe is voluntarily underemployed or unemployed. Connecticut Paid Family and Medical Leave benefits are also now expressly treated as income for guideline purposes.
If you read an article or used a calculator before August 2026, it may still describe these revisions as upcoming rather than current. The revised guidelines are the operative law now.
How the Schedule Number Becomes an Actual Order
Once each parent’s net weekly income is calculated, the two figures are added together. That combined net weekly income is matched to the Schedule of Basic Child Support Obligations for the applicable number of children. The schedule produces a total obligation, and each parent owes their proportional share of it.
Here’s how that works in concrete terms. If one parent earns $3,000 net per week and the other earns $1,000, the combined income is $4,000. The higher-earning parent holds a 75 percent share; the other holds 25 percent. For one child, the 2026 schedule places the basic obligation at approximately $622 per week. The higher earner owes 75 percent of that, and the lower earner owes 25 percent.
That basic obligation number isn’t the full order. Three additional categories are calculated separately and added on top:
- Health insurance premiums for the child, allocated by each parent’s income share
- Work-related child care costs, after applying any applicable federal tax credit adjustment
- Unreimbursed medical expenses, typically above a threshold amount per child per year
This is one of the most common points of confusion we see. A parent looks at a guideline calculator, gets a basic support figure, and assumes that’s the number. It isn’t. Health insurance and child care alone can add hundreds of dollars per week. The schedule figure is the floor, not the ceiling.
Only the noncustodial parent typically makes a cash payment. The custodial parent’s share is presumed to be spent directly on the child through housing, food, and daily expenses. Payment is usually enforced through an income withholding order, which routes support directly from the paying parent’s employer.
When a Court Deviates from the Guideline Number
The guideline amount functions as a rebuttable presumption. A judge or family support magistrate is required to start there, but can depart from it in writing if the facts of the case support a different number. The burden falls on whoever is seeking the deviation to justify it.
Shared Physical Custody & Overnight Time
Shared custody arrangements are among the most frequently litigated deviation questions, and there’s persistent misinformation on this point. Several websites state that a parent who has the child for at least 30, 34, or 35 percent of overnights automatically qualifies for a shared physical custody adjustment. That isn’t how Connecticut law works.
The Commission for Child Support Guidelines has explicitly rejected a fixed overnight-percentage threshold. The standard requires that parenting time be “substantially in excess of” a baseline schedule, generally understood as alternating weekends plus alternating holidays and some vacation time. Whether a particular arrangement clears that bar is a factual determination, not a percentage calculation. Courts look at the totality of the parenting schedule, not a single number.
Income Caps & the Self-Support Reserve
Two other deviation grounds appear regularly in practice. Courts won’t enter an order that consumes more than 55 percent of the paying parent’s net weekly income. And the guidelines protect the paying parent’s self-support reserve, set at the federal poverty level for a single individual. If the guideline calculation would push that parent’s remaining income below the reserve, the court must adjust the order downward.
Duration, Modification & Educational Support
Connecticut child support generally continues until the child turns 18 or graduates from high school, whichever occurs later, but the obligation can’t extend past age 19. The order doesn’t adjust automatically when circumstances change. Either parent must return to court to seek a modification.
A modification requires demonstrating a substantial change in circumstances. Connecticut presumes that a change is substantial when a fresh guideline calculation produces a number at least 15 percent higher or lower than the current order. Job loss, a significant income change, or a major shift in the parenting schedule can all satisfy that standard, but the change has to be actual and ongoing, not temporary.
Connecticut also allows courts to enter a separate educational support order for post-secondary expenses under Connecticut General Statutes Section 46b-56c. These orders cover college costs and can extend beyond the normal age-18 cutoff. They’re negotiated or litigated separately from the basic support calculation, and whether to pursue one is a strategic question that depends on the child’s age and the likely trajectory of both parents’ incomes.
The Guideline Number Is a Starting Point, Not a Final Answer
The CCSG-1 worksheet produces a consistent baseline, and for straightforward cases with modest incomes and a standard parenting schedule, it often produces the final number. But Fairfield County families frequently bring exactly the complications that push beyond it: combined incomes in the newly expanded $4,000 to $6,000 weekly range, parenting arrangements that may qualify for a shared custody deviation, and substantial add-on costs that significantly affect the total obligation. Working through how those facts apply to a specific case requires more than a calculator. If you have questions about how the current child support guidelines apply to your situation, we’re available to review the details with you. Reach us at (203) 599-3413.