Child support in Ohio.
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.
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Ohio adds both parents' annual incomes together, looks up a basic support figure on a statewide schedule that runs from $8,400 to $300,000 of combined annual income, and splits it in proportion to what each parent earns. Child care and health insurance are folded in through the worksheet. Since the 2019 overhaul the schedule has a built-in self-sufficiency reserve so that low earners are not ordered to pay more than they can live on.
How Ohio works out the number
Authority: Ohio Revised Code Chapter 3119; the basic child support schedule is at R.C. 3119.021 and the worksheets are prescribed by Ohio Administrative Code rule 5101:12-1-17Two layers. R.C. 3119.051 is automatic: when a court-ordered parenting time order "equals or exceeds ninety overnights per year," the court "shall reduce by ten per cent the amount of the annual individual support obligation." R.C. 3119.231 adds that at 90 or more overnights the court shall also consider whether to grant a further deviation, and if parenting time is 147 or more overnights and the court declines to deviate, "it shall specify in the order the facts that are the basis for the court's decision."
There is a worksheet, but no calculator
Ohio publishes JFS 07768, "Sole/Shared Child Support Computation Worksheet" and JFS 07769, "Split Parenting Child Support Computation Worksheet"; the sched 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
R.C. 3119.01 defines gross income as the "total of all earned and unearned income from all sources during a calendar year," including salaries, wages, "overtime pay, and bonuses to the extent described in division (D) of section 3119.05," self-generated income from a business or self-employment, commissions, royalties, tips, rents, dividends, severance pay, pensions and interest. The overtime and bonus rule in R.C. 3119.05 is important and easy to miss: the court includes "the lesser of" the three-year average of overtime, commissions and bonuses OR the prior year's total. A single big overtime year will not be annualized against you.
When a judge can treat you as earning more
R.C. 3119.01 defines "potential income" for a parent who is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, based on factors including "prior employment experience," "education," "availability of employment in the geographic area," and "prevailing wage and salary levels in the geographic area."
If you do not earn much
The schedule itself contains a self-sufficiency reserve based on 116 percent of the federal poverty level for a single person, applied on a sliding scale. Below $8,400 of combined annual income the minimum order in R.C. 3119.06 applies: "the court or agency shall issue a minimum child support order requiring the obligor to pay a minimum of eighty dollars a month." That $80 can be reduced or waived for a medically verified disability, institutionalization in a mental health facility, or other appropriate circumstances. If the obligor receives means-tested public assistance and complies with work requirements, the payment obligation is suspended and cannot be enforced during that period — though arrears keep accruing.
Childcare and health insurance
A parent pays "an amount equal to the obligor's income share of the child care cost incurred for the child or children subject to the order," capped at the maximum statewide average cost estimate. R.C. 3119.05(P) further caps the obligor's share at 50 percent of the cost when their income falls within the self-sufficiency reserve. Health care is handled through R.C. 3119.29 to 3119.303: the court decides who carries coverage and orders "cash medical support" toward ordinary medical expenses.
Private school, special needs, activities
R.C. 3119.23 lists the deviation factors, which include "special and unusual needs of the child or children, including needs arising from the physical or psychological condition," significant direct payments by a parent for "lessons, sports equipment, schooling, or clothing," extraordinary child care costs above the statewide average for a child with specialized needs, post-secondary education expenses a parent is paying, and "extended parenting time or extraordinary costs associated with parenting time, including extraordinary travel expenses." Extraordinary medical expenses are defined separately in R.C. 3119.01 as uninsured medical expenses in a year that exceed the total cash medical support owed that year.
When a judge can depart from the number
R.C. 3119.22: the court may deviate only if, after considering the R.C. 3119.23 factors, it determines the guideline amount "would be unjust or inappropriate and therefore not be in the best interest of the child." The order must state the guideline amount, the finding that it would be unjust or inappropriate, and "findings of fact supporting that determination." R.C. 3119.24 applies the same discipline to shared parenting cases, adding "extraordinary circumstances" such as each parent's ability to maintain adequate housing.
Two things people get wrong in Ohio. First, the 90-overnight rule is automatic — hit 90 court-ordered overnights and the paying parent's obligation drops 10 percent without anyone having to ask. Push past 147 and the judge has to explain in writing why they are NOT reducing it further. Second, the overtime rule protects you: Ohio uses the LESSER of your three-year overtime average or last year's overtime, so one brutal year of doubles will not permanently reset your support.
Later on
When it ends
R.C. 3119.86: generally at 18. It continues past 18 if the child "continuously attends a recognized and accredited high school on a full-time basis on and after the child's eighteenth birthday," if the child has a mental or physical disability and cannot support themselves, or if the parents agreed in writing in a separation agreement incorporated into the decree. An administrative order (one issued by the child support agency rather than a court) continues only on the high-school ground. The section was last amended by House Bill 338, effective March 20, 2025.
College and support after 18
Ohio courts do not order college support on their own. But R.C. 3119.86 recognizes a parents' written agreement to extend support past 18 when that agreement is incorporated into a divorce or dissolution decree — so if you want college covered, it has to go in the agreement. R.C. 3119.23 also lets a court count post-secondary expenses a parent is already paying as a deviation factor.
Changing the amount later
R.C. 3119.79: recalculate support under the current schedule and worksheet; if the recalculated figure "is more than ten per cent greater than or more than ten per cent less than" the existing order, that difference "shall be considered by the court as a change of circumstance substantial enough to require a modification." Inadequate health insurance coverage is a separate ground.
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.
If someone stops paying
R.C. 3119.06 provides that while an obligor receives means-tested public assistance and complies with work requirements, the support obligation is suspended and enforcement is prohibited, although arrearages continue to accrue.
What we could not confirm
- We could not confirm on an official Ohio source how far back a modification or an initial order can reach, or Ohio's published rules on license suspension and interest on arrears. Ohio's official law site was fully accessible to us — no blocks.
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 Ohio. Every figure is quoted from Ohio’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.