Child support in Missouri.
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 stateMissouri
Missouri uses Form 14, a worksheet issued by the Supreme Court of Missouri. It "seeks to apportion to the child the amount that the parents would have" spent in an intact household: combine both parents' adjusted monthly gross incomes, read the basic support amount off a schedule, add child care, health insurance and extraordinary costs, split the total by income share, then apply a credit for overnight visitation. The result is the "presumed child support amount."
How Missouri works out the number
Authority: Missouri Supreme Court Rule 88.01 and Civil Procedure Form No. 14, "Child Support Amount Calculation Worksheet." The Court repealed and replaced Form 14 by order dated March 4, 2025, with the new form effective January 1, 2026.Line 11, adjustment for overnight visitation or custody, based on periods of overnight visitation per year. Fewer than 36 periods gets 0 percent. From 36 to 109 periods the credit runs from 0 to 10 percent. At 110 or more periods the credit runs up to 34 percent, and a court may go above 34 percent and up to 50 percent where the presumed amount would be unjust or inappropriate. The directions warn that "The mere expenditure of substantial time with both parents does not by itself eliminate the need for support."
There is a worksheet, but no calculator
Missouri publishes Civil Procedure Form No. 14, "Child Support Amount Calculation Worksheet," with its Directions, Comments for Use and Examples for Completion and expects you to work through it by hand. Anyone selling you a paid calculator for this state is selling you arithmetic the court already published.
What goes into the calculation
What counts as income
Gross income includes "salaries, wages, commissions, dividends, severance pay, pensions, interest, trust income, annuities, partnership distributions, social security benefits" plus disability and unemployment benefits. Overtime, bonuses and second-job earnings are discretionary, not automatic: the Form 14 directions say the court MAY include "Overtime compensation, bonuses, earnings from secondary employment, recurring capital gains, prizes, retained earnings." Self-employment income is "gross receipts minus the ordinary and necessary expenses incurred to produce such receipts." Public assistance, Medicaid, SSI, food stamps and child support for other children are excluded.
When a judge can treat you as earning more
Applied when a parent is unemployed or underemployed. The court looks at the prior three years of work history, assets, age, health, "occupational qualifications, employment potential, educational attainments," criminal record, local job opportunities, and whether the parent is caring for a young child. There is a carve-out: "actual income, and not imputed income, shall be used" when the paying parent is facing six or more consecutive months of incarceration.
If you do not earn much
Form 14 builds in a self-support reserve for the paying parent. The version of the directions we could read caps eligibility for the overnight adjustment by adjusted monthly gross income at $1,450 for one child, $1,800 for two, $2,100 for three, $2,350 for four, $2,650 for five and $3,000 for six — described as the "maximum adjusted monthly gross income to which the self-support reserve applies."
Childcare and health insurance
Work-related child care goes on lines 6a and 6b of the worksheet, reduced by a child care tax credit that runs from 35 percent down to 20 percent of the cost depending on income and is capped at $250 for one child or $500 for two or more. Health insurance goes on line 6c: take the total monthly premium, divide by the number of people covered, and multiply by the number of children on the order.
Private school, special needs, activities
Line 6d covers uninsured extraordinary medical costs — those above $250 per year per child that are "predictable and recurring." Line 6e covers other extraordinary child-rearing costs: post-secondary education, private school, tutoring, camps and lessons, included when the parents agree or the court orders a contribution.
When a judge can depart from the number
Rule 88.01 creates "a rebuttable presumption that the amount of child support calculated pursuant to Civil Procedure Form No. 14 is the correct amount." To depart, the court needs "a written finding or a specific finding on the record … that the child support amount under a correctly calculated Form No. 14 … is unjust or inappropriate," and the order must specifically address the statutory factors in § 452.340.1 RSMo.
Missouri is one of the few states where child support can follow your child into college — and where the child's own course load and grades keep it alive or kill it. Twelve credit hours a semester, enrollment by October 1 after high school, and passing at least half the classes. The other thing to watch: the Supreme Court replaced Form 14 with a new version effective January 1, 2026, so make sure whoever runs your numbers is using the current form.
Later on
When it ends
RSMo 452.340(3): support ends when the child dies, marries, enters active duty in the military, becomes self-supporting with the custodial parent's express or implied consent, reaches age 18 (unless subsection 4 or 5 applies), or reaches age 21. If the child is physically or mentally incapacitated, insolvent and unmarried, the court may extend support past 18.
College and support after 18
Yes, and Missouri is unusually generous here. RSMo 452.340(5): if the child is enrolled in and attending a secondary school program at 18, support continues until the program is complete or the child turns 21, whichever comes first. For college or vocational school, the child must enroll "not later than October first following graduation" and carry "at least twelve hours of credit each semester" with "grades sufficient to reenroll"; support then continues until the education is complete or the child turns 21. If the child receives failing grades in half or more of a twelve-hour course load in any one semester, support may be terminated.
Changing the amount later
RSMo 452.370 requires "changed circumstances so substantial and continuing as to make the terms unreasonable." There is a shortcut: if a fresh guideline calculation "would result in a change of child support from the existing amount by twenty percent or more," a prima facie showing of substantial changed circumstances has been made.
How far back a change can reach
A modification reaches only installments that "accrued subsequent to the date of personal service" of the motion. For an initial order in a parentage case, RSMo 210.841 provides that "Any award for periodic child support may be retroactive to the date of service of the original petition."
What we could not confirm
- The court's website kept serving us the April 5, 2022 edition of the Form 14 directions, so the dollar figures above for the self-support reserve income caps, the child care tax credit and the overnight credit table may have changed in the version that took effect January 1, 2026. Confirm the current figures against the Form 14 directions on the Missouri Courts site before relying on them. We also could not confirm Missouri's official rules on license suspension or interest on arrears.
- 2 official pages we tried to read refused automated access. We did not try to get around the block, so some detail above comes from a different official source rather than the one we would have preferred.
Compare all fifty states
The overnight thresholds, the ending ages and the college rules, side by side.
The rest of what we have written about Missouri. Every figure is quoted from Missouri’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.