Find out how our child support lawyers can assist you.

Wisconsin courts routinely enter orders requiring a parent of a child to make a financial contribution toward the child’s expenses when the child’s parents do not live together.  Child support can be ordered in many different types of court proceedings, including divorces, legal separations, annulments and paternity actions. While a family law attorney can give you advice relating to your specific situation, here are some general guidelines:

Divorce Lawyer Wausau Note: A child support calculator for shared placement cases can be found on the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families website (requires Microsoft Excel).

Shared Placement Situations

It is common for one party to pay child support, even if he or she has the children for a significant amount of the time.  To calculate child support in Wisconsin in a shared placement situation (where each parent has the children for at least  92 overnights each year), the court looks at the gross income of each parent and the number of overnights each child spends with each parent.

Special rules govern the application of the percentage standards to the following different types of payers:

• A serial family payer (a payer with an existing child support obligation who incurs an additional child support obligation in a subsequent family)
• A split-custody payer (a payer who has physical placement of at least one but not all the children)
• High income payers (earning more than $7,000 per month)
• Low income payers (earning less than $1,350 per month)

Divorce Lawyer Wausau Note: See the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families website for more tools and calculators to use in determining child support.

Primary Placement Situations