The North Carolina Child Support Guidelines provide worksheets that produce child support calculations based on certain inputs. Worksheet A is to be used when one parent has primary custody, meaning that parent has the child for 243 or more overnights per year. For child support purposes, this is considered “primary custody”, but it does not change either parent’s legal custodial status – the number of overnights is important simply for deciding which worksheet to use. In this case, you have your son for 52 overnights per year, so you will use Worksheet A. Worksheet A will ask you for the number of children, monthly gross income, pre-existing child support payments, the number of other children, work related child care costs, health insurance premium costs, and extraordinary expenses. Enter this information, and Worksheet A will give you the appropriate amount of child support. If you have more than one child, enter the total number of overnights for each child. For example, in this case, if you have two children who are with you one night per week, the number of overnights entered into the calculator would be 104. (Click here to go to NC Child Support Worksheet A.)
If both parents have custody of the children for more than 123 nights per year, use Worksheet B to calculate child support. (Click here to go to NC Child Support Worksheet B.)