California has some of the highest child support guidelines in the United States. The right to receive child support is valuable because, unlike spousal support, child support is not taxable to the recipient or deductible by the payor. People who pay child support are often frustrated because trial courts typically refuse to listen when the paying party complains that the child support being paid is not being used for the child.

People tend to believe that, when it comes to child support, there is nothing to argue about because the amount of child support one pays is calculated using a computer program that is based on a statutory formula, and the number that comes out of the computer is entirely dependent on what numbers are put into the computer.

If a party fails to disclose all of his or her income (perhaps because it is received in the form of cash or fringe benefits) or overstates his or her timeshare with the children, he or she is going to end up paying less in child support. It pays to have an attorney that knows how the statutory formula works and how to make sure the correct numbers are used in the child support calculation.