Societal changes and economic realities justify the need for laws to be considered anew from time to time. In fact, Massachusetts must review its child support guidelines to ensure federal compliance every four years. The latest child support guidelines will be effective as of December 1, 2025.
Universally, child support guidelines apply in all cases for both married and unmarried parents. These orders are considered the correct amount unless a parent can clearly convince the court there should be a different result.
KEY CHANGES
HIGH-EARNING PARENTS
Parents’ maximum combined incomes used for calculations has increased from $400,000 to $450,000. For parents whose combined annual incomes exceeds $450,000, the guidelines are applied on the first $450,000 in the same proportion as the parents’ actual incomes. Greater than $450,000 combined incomes are at the court’s discretion.
LOW INCOME-EARNING PARENTS
2025 Federal Poverty Guidelines protect low-income parents. Equitable balances must be sought between rights and obligation. All parents must contribute to their children’s support. However, payors have a right to live at an economic level that is not merely subsistence.
TYPES OF INCOME
Purposefully, “income” remains deliberately comprehensive to sweep in a host of sources of income. As a sign of the times, “income” extends to emerging and increasingly commonplace sources of income. This income includes digital assets and nontraditional forms of compensation.
Interestingly, incarceration is not considered involuntary unemployment. Involuntary unemployment is a slippery slope. Such nebulous examples could then be unfairly classified as “attributed” income.
ALIMONY AND CHILD SUPPORT
The child support guidelines now give practitioners and parents alike clear guidance on the interplay of child support and alimony. Over the years, an ongoing debate has ensued as to whether it was mandatory to present the judge with a Cavanagh analysis when calculating alimony and child support, The guidelines leave no room for doubt. Cavanagh v. Cavanagh (490 Mass. 398, 2022) is now officially incorporated in the guidelines.
Cavanagh involves a three-prong analysis when both alimony and child support considerations are at stake:
Under Cavanagh, a court must:
1. Calculate alimony first, then calculate child support using the parties’ pos-alimony incomes.
2. Calculated child support first, then calculate alimony based on the resulting incomes.
3. Compare both outcomes and determine which approach yields the fairest overall outcome for the family.
Importantly, judges still retain flexibility to consider what is most equitable for the particular family.
PARENTING TIME
Calculations for child support apply to all types of parenting schedules. Resignation Modern day family arrangements which do not neatly check the boxes for traditional shared or primary residence arrangements have been at least considered, although not as comprehensively as hoped.
CHILD CARE COSTS
Average costs for raising an infant in Massachusetts have increased. Statistical data analytics justified the increase in the prior weekly benchmark of $355 per child to $430 per child.
Qualifying childcare costs only encompass those expenses which allow a parent to work, attend school, or complete job training. Courts then divide childcare costs in proportion to each parent’s income rather than apply a rough justice 50//50 cost-sharing. This apportionment insightfully permits a more precise allotment.
Equitable complications can arise in this area for families where a parent fronts costs while another parent claims a dependent care tax credit. Judicial discretion is the
remedy. As an example, fairness is more equitably achieved if the judge can order the higher-income parent the responsibility to pay for expensive orthodontia.
MULTIPLE PARENTS
Massachusetts has made recent changes to laws regarding parentage.
The Guidelines specifically take into consideration that a child can have more than 2 legal parents. Children having more than two legal parents have family circumstances justifiably warranting in-depth analysis. Courts may give due consideration for the practical and economic realities as to how both time and financial responsibility are shared among multiple legal parents. In all cases, courts should aim to find an equitable balance the best interests of the children and the legal parents’ rights.
UNINSURED MEDICAL EXPENSES
The Guidelines presume the first $250 of uninsured medical and dental expenses will be paid by the recipient. Amounts greater than $250 of uninsured medical and dental expenses will be allocated by judicial determination between the parents without an adjustment to child support.
COLLEGE
As before, parents can be responsible for up to 50% of the in-state cost of undergraduate tuition, room, and board at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. However, courts retain discretion as to ordering higher or lower contributions by one or the other parent.
Child support goes hand-in-hand with college considerations. Taking all factors into consideration, courts have ongoing options to extend, reduce, or fashion a different result for child support for children over age 18.
OTHER CHILDREN
For general clarification, children not covered by the case may be taken into account in adjusting the child support calculations.
MODIFICATIONS
A Modification of child support may be justifiable upon a showing that there has been a material “change in circumstances.” Current orders in effect could be a basis for seeking a Modification of the current orders. In particular, the circumstances that led to a child support deviation in a prior order which still apply would be part of a court’s consideration.
Calculating resulting changes using the updated guidelines will readily reveal what the new support order. A cost-benefit analysis of the likelihood of prevailing in court should be measured against the impact of difference between the old and new guideline orders.
CONCLUSION
While providing welcome clarifications on a number of key points, gaps still abound. One example pertains to parenting time. The child support guidelines worksheet considers two types of parenting plans: (1) child primarily live with one parent and spend about 1/3 of their time with the other parent; (2) the children live 50% of the time with each parent.
What about circumstances in which parenting time is more than 50% but less than one-third? Although the guidelines indicate this is a circumstance that could justify a change, no clear guidance is given as to what the support should be in this situation.
The downside is that judges will have tremendous discretion; the upside is that parents and practitioners will have the opportunity to present the particular family circumstances to the judge in the hope that will lead to an equitable and tailored result.
On and after December 2025, clients and practitioners alike should engage in a review of past orders to ascertain possible results. Recalculations can lead to very meaningful changes considering the number of years at stake.