Child support in Tennessee.
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 stateTennessee
Tennessee's guidelines 'establish the dollar amount of child support obligations based on the amount of parents' combined adjusted gross income and the number of children.' Both incomes are adjusted, combined, and looked up on the Child Support Schedule; each parent owes their percentage of income share. Work-related child care, the children's share of the health insurance premium, and recurring uninsured medical costs are added on. Parenting time then moves the number up or down.
How Tennessee works out the number
Authority: Rules of the Tennessee Department of Human Services, Child Support Services Division, Chapter 1240-02-04 (Child Support Guidelines), effective October 1, 2021, adopted under T.C.A. §§ 36-5-101(e), 71-1-105(12) and (16), and 71-1-132Yes, and Tennessee has thresholds at both ends with a dead zone in the middle. At 92 or more days a year with the children, the paying parent's obligation goes down. At 68 or fewer days, it goes up – the guidelines call that a 'penalty' rather than an expense adjustment. 'No PTA is calculated for parenting time between 68 and 92 days.' A 'day' is 'more than twelve (12) hours within a twenty-four (24) hour period,' not a calendar day, and only one parent can claim credit in any 24-hour period. In extraordinary circumstances, short repeated visits can be added up into a single day – the guidelines give the example of a parent picking a child up after school three or more days a week and keeping the child until 8 p.m.
Use the state’s own calculator, not ours
Tennessee publishes this itself, free. It is called Child Support Worksheet and Credit Worksheet, published as the Income Shares Worksheet Excel workbook (Windows and Mac versions) by the Tennessee Department of . 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 Tennessee calculator →What goes into the calculation
What counts as income
Gross income is drawn broadly from all sources. Four things are specifically excluded: 'child support payments received by either parent for the benefit of a child of another relationship'; benefits from means-tested public assistance programs; 'the child's income from any source'; and adoption assistance payments. The gross income of step-parents and of non-parent caretakers is not counted. Overtime, bonuses and second-job earnings are part of gross income; self-employment income is reduced by one-half of self-employment tax actually paid.
When a judge can treat you as earning more
Three routes. First, where a parent 'has been determined by a tribunal to be willfully underemployed or unemployed.' Second, 'when there is no reliable evidence of income due to a parent failing to participate in a child support proceeding or a parent failing to supply adequate and reliable financial information.' Third, 'when the parent owns substantial non-income producing assets,' where the court may impute a reasonable rate of return. On willfulness, the guidelines are broad: the reasonableness of an occupational choice 'is not limited to those motivated by an intent to avoid or reduce the payment of child support, but can be based on any intentional choice or act that affects an obligor parent's income.' Protections: incarceration is not treated as willful underemployment; military enlistment or activation alone does not trigger imputation; a stay-at-home parent 'should not automatically be deemed to be willfully and voluntarily unemployed or underemployed,' and the court must weigh whether that parent was the full-time caretaker during the relationship, how long they have been out of the workforce, and the children's ages. Where income must be imputed for lack of evidence, Tennessee uses gender-specific median figures: '$35,936' a year for the female population and '$43,761' for the male population.
If you do not earn much
Tennessee builds a self-support reserve into the schedule itself – the shaded area of the Child Support Schedule. The state's own 2025 guidelines review report describes it as 'equivalent to the 2020 federal poverty guidelines for one person ($1,063) multiplied by 90% … [which] results in a SSR of about $950 per month.' Below that, the $100 minimum order applies. Obligors qualify for the reserve where gross income is under about $1,350 a month with one child, $1,600 with two, $1,750 with three, $1,900 with four, and $2,050 with five or more. The floor is firm: once the minimum order applies, 'the Final Child Support Order will be set at $100.'
Childcare and health insurance
Both are mandatory add-ons, not optional. The model 'includes in the child support obligation actual amounts paid by the parents or the non-parent caretaker for the child's share of a health insurance premium, recurring uninsured medical expenses, and work-related childcare.' Each parent's pro rata share of what the other is paying is calculated and folded into the adjusted support obligation. Health insurance cost is 'reasonable' if it does not exceed 5% of that parent's gross income; if adding vision or dental pushes the total past 5%, only medical insurance is required. Uninsured medical expenses are defined broadly to include co-pays, deductibles, orthodontia, dental, asthma treatment, physical therapy, vision, and mental health counseling.
Private school, special needs, activities
The schedule 'does not include … extraordinary educational costs, because the actual cost of these expenses varies widely from household to household.' Private or special schooling and 'other significant special expenses associated with the social, athletic or cultural development of the child' can only be added by deviation, and every deviation must be 'substantiated by written findings in the Child Support Order.'
When a judge can depart from the number
The guidelines are a rebuttable presumption. 'Deviations must be substantiated by written findings in the Child Support Order,' setting out the presumptive amount and the reason for the departure. One trap for later: 'a deviation cannot be utilized to demonstrate a significant variance in a subsequent action for modification.'
Two things that surprise people. First, if the court has to guess at your income because you did not produce records, Tennessee plugs in a median figure that differs by gender – $43,761 a year for men and $35,936 for women – which means not showing up can cost a father more than a mother. Second, there is a parenting-time dead zone: between 69 and 91 days a year you get no adjustment at all, so pushing a schedule from 85 nights to 92 nights is worth real money while pushing it from 70 to 85 is worth nothing.
Later on
When it ends
In Tennessee support generally runs until the child turns 18 or graduates from high school, whichever is later, with an outer limit tied to the child's 19th birthday. We could not open Tennessee's official statute site to quote the exact language, so confirm the end date with the court clerk or a lawyer before you stop paying.
College and support after 18
The Tennessee guidelines do not provide for college support. Anything past high school would have to come from an agreement between the parents.
Changing the amount later
Tennessee calls it a 'significant variance.' For orders already set under the income shares guidelines, the test is simple: you 'need only demonstrate a 15% difference between the amount of the current order and the proposed new order.' For older orders set under the pre-2005 flat-percentage guidelines, the criteria include a 15% change in the paying parent's gross income, a change in the number of children that parent is responsible for, a supported child becoming disabled, the paying parent being incarcerated for 180 consecutive days or more, or the parties agreeing to modify in line with the guidelines – plus a 15% variance between the existing and proposed order. The variance requirement does not apply where the paying parent changes, where you are adding health care expenses, or where you are removing a deviation whose reason no longer exists.
How far back a change can reach
We could not confirm from an official Tennessee source how far back a modification or an initial order can reach, so nothing is stated here. File promptly.
If someone stops paying
The Department of Human Services Child Support Services Division administers the program and publishes the worksheets and calculators. We could not confirm license-suspension or interest-on-arrears rules on an official source.
What we could not confirm
- Tennessee's official rules website would not open for us, so we worked from the Department of Human Services' own published guides, definitions and 2025 guidelines review report rather than the rule text itself. We could not confirm the exact statutory language on when support ends, or the state's rules on retroactivity and enforcement. Before you rely on the end date of your obligation, check with the court clerk or a Tennessee lawyer.
- 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.