Child Support

Tennessee uses the Income Shares Model to establish child support; these rules were effective January 18, 2005. A major revision to these rules takes effect June 25, 2006. In order to determine a child support obligation with this model, the parents must know certain variables to be inserted into a mathematical equation to determine child support obligations. Those variables include: names and birth dates of children; days each year a parent is responsible for parenting each child; gross monthly income of Mother; gross monthly income of Father; average annual cost of child care required for both parents to work; additional cost of providing health care, dental and vision insurance for the children. There are other variables that need to be known on a case-by-case basis.

To get a summary of child support payments if they are paid through Nashville, please go to this link:

https://www.tennesseeanytime.org/tcses/

You will need your 9-digit TCSES case number and your Social Security number. (Obtain TCSES number from Court or your attorney.)

It is now possible to have child support payments paid through Nashville paid to the recipient by direct deposit into his/her bank account or by a reloadable debit card (available late June 2006). Go to this link to download the form for direct deposit:

http://www.state.tn.us/humanserv/directdeposit.htm

To learn more about the reloadable debit card, go to this link

http://www.state.tn.us/humanserv/elecdisb.htm

To try your hand at calculating child support, you can download the new calculator obtained from this link:

http://www.state.tn.us/humanserv/is/incomeshares.html

Please be sure to read all the instructions carefully before downloading and attempting to use the Excel or web-based calculators. They are confusing, difficult to work, and experienced professionals often must seek assistance from computer experts to figure them out.