Missouri Child Support Calculator: Form 14, Credits, and Imputed Income

The Missouri child support calculator is Form 14, a worksheet required by Missouri Supreme Court Rule 88.01 that produces a presumed monthly support amount from both parents’ gross income, the number of children, work-related childcare, health insurance premiums, and overnight parenting time. Whatever Form 14 generates is the number a judge will use unless someone shows good reason to depart from it, so the inputs matter more than any negotiation between the parties.

How the Income Shares Model Produces a Number

Missouri uses an income shares approach. The premise is that a child should receive the same share of parental income they would have had if both parents lived together. The state publishes a Schedule of Basic Child Support Obligations that maps combined parental income and the number of children to a base monthly figure.¹ The schedule runs from $0 up to $30,000 in combined adjusted gross monthly income and lists separate obligations for one through six children. At the floor, the minimum obligation is $50 per month. At $30,000 combined monthly income with one child, the base obligation reaches $2,164.

Each parent’s share of that base amount tracks their share of the combined income. Earn 60 percent of the total, and you are responsible for 60 percent of the base obligation. The parent without primary physical custody pays their share to the other parent. That proportional split runs through every adjustment the form makes after it.

What You Enter on Form 14

Pull your records before you open the worksheet: recent pay stubs, last year’s W-2s and tax returns, and documentation of any other income streams. Line 1 asks for each parent’s gross monthly income — everything before taxes and deductions, including salary, wages, commissions, bonuses, Social Security benefits, and rental income.² Use gross figures, not take-home pay.

If you support other children living primarily in your home, or you pay court-ordered support for children from a different relationship, Line 2c lets you subtract an amount based on what you would owe for those other children under the same schedule, reduced by any support you receive for them.² Bring documentation of those obligations.

After income, the form adds two child-specific costs: work-related childcare and the monthly premium for the child’s health insurance coverage. Both are split in proportion to each parent’s income, not according to who has the child more.² Enter monthly averages. If childcare drops during the school year, spread the yearly cost across twelve months so the figure reflects what you actually spend over time.

Form 14 is a free PDF on the Missouri Courts website, and circuit clerk offices keep paper copies. Each entry is a monthly figure, and both parents fill out their respective columns.

The Overnight Visitation Credit

Line 11 is where the number can move substantially. It reduces the paying parent’s obligation based on how many overnights they have with the child each year, because overnights mean the parent is directly covering food, utilities, and daily expenses the other parent would otherwise bear.²

The credit scales in tiers. A parent with roughly 36 to 72 overnights per year receives a modest adjustment. Around 110 overnights, the credit grows meaningfully. A parent with more than half the overnights in a year can receive a credit of up to 50 percent. The specific tier depends on your parenting plan, so count overnights carefully before you fill in this line. Moving from one tier to the next can shift a monthly obligation by several hundred dollars, which is why custody and support negotiations are so often tangled together.

Imputed Income if a Parent Is Underemployed

A parent cannot avoid support by quitting a job or working below their earning capacity. Missouri courts have held that a parent will not be permitted to escape their obligation by voluntarily limiting their work to reduce income.³ When that happens, the judge imputes income, meaning the Form 14 calculation uses what the parent could earn rather than what they currently bring home.

Five factors drive the imputation analysis:

Recent work history, typically the three years before the proceeding.
Occupational qualifications: education, training, and professional credentials.
Employment potential, meaning the realistic ability to find work in the parent’s field.
Local job opportunities actually available in the parent’s community.
Custodial responsibilities, such as caring for a child whose condition makes outside employment unreasonable.³

The classic case: an engineer who takes a part-time retail job right before a support hearing. A court will likely run the calculation at engineering wages. Imputation is not punitive, though. It requires evidence of both the capacity and the opportunity to earn more. A parent genuinely laid off in an industry downturn will not have income imputed from a salary they earned five years earlier.

When a Judge Can Depart From the Form 14 Number

The figure Form 14 produces is presumed correct, but a judge can set it aside if the result would be unjust or inappropriate for the family’s actual circumstances.² Missouri law lists the factors a court weighs:

The child’s financial needs and resources, including any independent income.
Each parent’s financial resources and needs, such as significant debt, disability, or unusually high income.
The child’s pre-divorce standard of living.
The child’s physical and emotional condition, including chronic medical needs or special educational requirements.
Custody arrangements and associated costs, such as travel for long-distance visitation.
Work-related childcare expenses beyond what the form already captured.⁴

The parent asking for a deviation carries the burden and needs concrete evidence. Private school tuition invoices. Medical billing records. When a court does deviate, it has to issue written findings explaining why the standard calculation was set aside.² Those written findings protect both parties if the order is appealed.

Changing the Amount Later

Either parent can file a motion to modify child support, but the standard is specific: a substantial and continuing change in circumstances that makes the current order unreasonable.⁵

Missouri gives you a benchmark. If running current numbers through Form 14 produces an amount at least 20 percent different from the existing order, that gap alone creates a presumption that circumstances have changed enough to justify modification.⁵ Common triggers: a major raise or job loss, a new custody arrangement that changes overnight counts, or a child aging out of expensive childcare. The court considers all financial resources of both parents, including income from a new spouse or partner sharing the household.

File promptly if your income drops. A modification only applies from the date the motion is filed, not back to when your circumstances changed. Waiting creates arrears you cannot undo.

When the Obligation Ends

Support terminates at 18 by default, but Missouri has extensions that catch parents off guard. If your child is still in high school at 18, support continues until they finish or turn 21, whichever comes first. If the child enrolls in a college or vocational program by October 1 after graduating high school and carries at least 12 credit hours per semester (excluding summer), support continues until they complete their program or turn 21.⁴ The child has to maintain grades sufficient to stay enrolled. If a child with a physical or mental disability cannot support themselves and is both unmarried and insolvent, the court can extend support past 18 with no automatic cutoff at 21.

Support also ends early if the child marries, enters active-duty military service, becomes self-supporting with the custodial parent’s consent, or dies. When the child turns 21, the obligation is automatically terminated without any additional filing, as long as the order does not specifically extend support for disability reasons.⁴

Tax Treatment of the Payment

One point worth knowing before you plan around the number: child support is tax-neutral. The paying parent cannot deduct the payments, and the receiving parent does not report them as income.⁶ The separate question of who claims the child for the child tax credit defaults to the custodial parent, though that parent can release the claim to the other using IRS Form 8332.⁷ Some Missouri support orders address this allocation directly; if yours does not, the custodial parent keeps the credit.

1
Missouri Courts. Missouri Schedule of Basic Child Support Obligations
2
Missouri Courts. Directions, Comments for Use and Examples for Completion of Form No. 14
3
Justia Law. Sherman v Sherman – 2004 Missouri Court of Appeals Decisions
4
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes RSMo 452.340
5
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes RSMo 454.500
6
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 504 – Divorced or Separated Individuals
7
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8332 – Release/Revocation of Release of Claim to Exemption for Child by Custodial Parent