Child support in New Jersey.
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 stateNew Jersey
New Jersey combines both parents' net weekly incomes, reads a basic support amount off the Appendix IX-F schedules, and splits it in proportion to income. Work-related child care and health insurance are added on top. Everything runs weekly, not monthly, and the whole scheme lives in the court rules rather than a statute — the Supreme Court updates the numbers by order most years.
How New Jersey works out the number
Authority: N.J. Court Rule 5:6A, which adopts the Child Support Guidelines set out in Appendix IX-A (Considerations in the Use of Child Support Guidelines), Appendix IX-B (Use of the Child Support Guidelines), Appendix IX-E (net child care expense worksheet) and Appendix IX-H (combined tax withholding tables),New Jersey has a separate shared-parenting worksheet, and Appendix IX-A paragraph 14 governs when it may be used — including subsection (e): "If a shared-parenting award is inappropriate due to the PPR's limited household income, a sole-custody award shall be calculated." The 2025 amendments set the household income floor for shared parenting at twice the poverty guideline — for example, $813 per week for a two-person household. We could not confirm the number of overnights required to reach shared parenting.
There is a worksheet, but no calculator
New Jersey publishes The Appendix IX series carries the worksheets; Appendix IX-E is the net child care expense worksheet. 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
Appendix IX-B carries the line-by-line definition of gross and net income; overtime, bonuses and self-employment are addressed there, with self-employment requiring analysis of the business tax returns. We could not read the full appendix text on the Judiciary's website — see blocked — so we are not going to state specifics we could not verify.
When a judge can treat you as earning more
Appendix IX-A paragraph 12, "Imputing Income to Parents," governs. The 2025 amendment order marks that paragraph "[no change]," so its text was not reproduced and we could not read the standard itself.
If you do not earn much
Appendix IX-A paragraph 20, "Extreme Parental Income Situations." The self-support reserve is 150 percent of the U.S. poverty guideline for one person — "$451 per week" as of January 1, 2025, up from $434. An obligor's award is reduced only if paying it would drop them below that reserve AND the other parent's income is above the reserve. For obligors with very low income, the award should fall between "$5.00 per week" and the support amount at $180 combined net weekly income.
Childcare and health insurance
Work-related child care and health insurance are "added to the basic child support obligation" as supplemental expenses and shared proportionally by income. Appendix IX-E is the worksheet for netting child care costs against the federal child care tax credit.
New Jersey runs its numbers weekly, which throws people off — a "$451" self-support reserve is per week, not per month. And the guidelines are court rules that get re-issued by Supreme Court order almost every year, so the dollar figures move on June 1. Before you settle, check which year's tables your calculation used.
Later on
When it ends
We could not confirm the exact ending age and conditions on a state source. This is worth one phone call to the clerk.
College and support after 18
Appendix IX-A paragraph 25 is titled "Support for a Child Who has Reached Majority" and Appendix XVIII-A section 18 addresses post-secondary expenses, but both were marked "[no change]" in the amendment order we could read, so their text was not available to us.
How far back a change can reach
We could not confirm this state’s rule on how far back an order or a change can be applied. It matters: in some states the clock starts the day you file, so filing late costs money you do not get back.
What we could not confirm
- The New Jersey Judiciary's website refused our automated requests for the pages that hold the full text of the guidelines appendices, so we could only read the annual amendment order — which shows the paragraphs that changed and marks the rest "[no change]." That means we could not confirm New Jersey's income definition, imputation standard, the overnight threshold for the shared-parenting worksheet, the deviation standard, when support terminates, the modification standard, or how far back an order can reach. The full guidelines are published on njcourts.gov under Rule 5:6A and Appendix IX-A; ask a New Jersey attorney or your county's family division to walk you through them. Also note the self-support reserve figure above is the January 1, 2025 number; a June 1, 2026 update has since taken effect and we could not read its figures.
- 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 New Jersey. Every figure is quoted from New Jersey’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.