Child support in Kentucky.
What the state’s own guideline says, where the number comes from, and the one figure that moves it more than anything you will argue about.
See a different stateKentucky
Kentucky adds both parents' monthly gross incomes (after a few adjustments), finds the combined figure on a statutory table that runs up to $30,000 a month, and splits the resulting amount between the parents in proportion to their incomes. Since 2021 Kentucky has also had a formal shared-parenting-time credit that reduces the paying parent's number as overnights go up.
How Kentucky works out the number
Authority: KRS 403.212 (child support guidelines and table), KRS 403.211 (application, deviation, health insurance, child care), KRS 403.2122 (shared parenting time credit), KRS 403.213 (modification and termination)Yes, and the entry point is 88 overnights. Under KRS 403.2122 a parent must have 'a minimum of eighty-eight (88) days per year' to get any credit; the adjustment percentage then climbs from 15% at that threshold up to 50% at 182 to 182.5 days a year. The credit only counts parenting time that is 'court-ordered or exercised by consent.' Important catch: 'the self-support reserve … and the shared parenting time credit … shall not be applied together' – you get one or the other, not both. A court may also decline the credit where the other parent receives KCHIP, KTAP, SNAP or Medicaid.
Use the state’s own calculator, not ours
Kentucky publishes this itself, free. It is called CS-71, Worksheet for Monthly Child Support Obligation (https://www.ag.ky.gov/Resources/Child-Support/Documents/CS71.docx); CS-71.1, Worksheet for Monthly Child . We are not going to build a competing calculator and ask you to trust it — this is the one a judge will recognize.
Open the Kentucky calculator →What goes into the calculation
What counts as income
Gross income includes 'income from salaries, wages, retirement and pension funds, commissions, bonuses, dividends, severance pay, pensions, interest, trust income, annuities, capital gains, Social Security benefits, workers' compensation benefits, unemployment insurance benefits, disability insurance benefits' and more. Means-tested public assistance and food stamps are excluded. For a business owner, 'gross income means gross receipts minus ordinary and necessary expenses required for self-employment or business operation,' using straight-line IRS depreciation only. In-kind payments and expense reimbursements count as income 'if they are significant and reduce personal living expenses.' Bonuses are named in the statute; overtime and second-job pay fall under wages and are generally counted. From the combined figure the court subtracts pre-existing maintenance, pre-existing child support for prior children, and an imputed obligation for other prior-born children living with that parent.
When a judge can treat you as earning more
If a parent is 'voluntarily unemployed or underemployed,' support is set on potential income. Kentucky is explicit that a judge may find voluntary underemployment 'without finding that the parent intended to avoid or reduce the child support obligation' – you do not have to be trying to dodge support to be treated as earning more. The rule does not apply to an incarcerated parent, a parent who is physically or mentally incapacitated, or a parent caring for a child age three or younger.
If you do not earn much
Kentucky publishes a self-support reserve of $915 per month. Parents with adjusted gross income at or below thresholds that run roughly $1,100 to $1,600 a month depending on how many children are involved get that protection, producing minimum orders in the range of $60 to $85 a month.
Childcare and health insurance
Courts allocate 'reasonable and necessary child care costs incurred due to employment, job search, or education' between the parents in proportion to their combined adjusted gross incomes. Health insurance must be ordered where reasonable and accessible; 'reasonable in cost' means the cost does not exceed 'five percent (5%) of his or her gross income.' Extraordinary medical expenses above $250 a year are 'allocated between the parties in proportion to their combined monthly adjusted parental gross incomes.'
Private school, special needs, activities
Deviation is allowed for 'a child's extraordinary medical, dental, educational, or special needs,' for a parent's own extraordinary expenses, for the child's independent financial resources, for combined income above the table, and for other extraordinary factors the court identifies.
When a judge can depart from the number
The guidelines are a rebuttable presumption. A court may depart where applying them 'would be unjust or inappropriate,' and 'any deviation shall be accompanied by a written finding or specific finding on the record by the court, specifying the reason for the deviation.'
Two things catch people out. First, the 88-overnight cliff: at 87 overnights you get nothing, at 88 you get a 15% adjustment – so a parenting schedule that is one or two nights short of the line is worth negotiating over. Second, if you qualify for the low-income self-support reserve you cannot also take the shared parenting time credit; the statute makes you pick one.
Later on
When it ends
Support ends at emancipation, with a high-school exception: 'In cases where the child becomes emancipated because of age, but not due to marriage, while still a high school student, the court-ordered support shall continue while the child is a high school student, but not beyond completion of the school year during which the child reaches the age of nineteen (19) years.' Arrears survive emancipation.
College and support after 18
The Kentucky guidelines make no provision for college support. If you want tuition covered, put it in your agreement.
Changing the amount later
'The provisions of any decree respecting child support may be modified only … upon a showing of a material change in circumstances that is substantial and continuing.' A 15% swing does the work: 'Application of the Kentucky child support guidelines … which results in equal to or greater than a fifteen percent (15%) change in the amount of support due per month shall be rebuttably presumed to be a material change in circumstances.' A change under 15% is presumed not to be material.
How far back a change can reach
A decree 'may be modified only as to installments accruing subsequent to the filing of the motion for modification.' In plain terms: nothing changes for the months before you file. File the day your circumstances change, not months later.
If someone stops paying
The Kentucky Attorney General's Office runs the child support program and publishes the worksheets and the guidelines table. Private attorneys use the federal Income Withholding for Support order to notify an employer. The AG's public page does not address license suspension or interest on arrears, so we have not stated those.
What we could not confirm
- We could not confirm on an official Kentucky page whether the state suspends licenses or charges interest on unpaid support. Ask the Attorney General's child support office directly.
Compare all fifty states
The overnight thresholds, the ending ages and the college rules, side by side.