The Minnesota Department of Human Services has created a handyon-line child support calculator that you can use to get a pretty good idea of how much child support you may pay, or receive, in Minnesota depending on the facts of your case.   

To use this calculator you need to know the following:

  • Each parent’s gross monthly income.  Gross monthly income includes wages, worker’s compensation, unemployment compensation, military payments, pension benefits, spousal maintenance, disability payments and social security payments.  Gross monthly income does not include child support, public assistance or the income of a parent’s current spouse.  
  • The number of “non-joint” children living in each parent’s home.  A “non-joint” child is one who is not the child of both parents for whom the current child support obligation is being set. 
  • The percentage of parenting time the child will be spending overnight in the non-custodial parent’s home.  This percentage will either be 0 to 10 percent,10 to 45 percent or 45.1 to 50 percent.  This number determines the “parenting expense adjustment” that will be applied.

Once you have gathered information on each parent’s gross monthly income, the number of non-joint children in each parent’s home, and the percentage of parenting time the child will be spending overnight in the non-custodial parent’s home, you can simply go to the on-line child support calculator, plug these numbers in, and get a general idea of how much child support you may pay, or receive, in any given case.