Every state sets its own rules, and yours may have changed since you signed.
Published reference material. What follows is what each state’s statute, schedule and rule text say, with the citation for each. The Dads Standard is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. This is general information, not advice about your case, and it does not tell you what to file or what to ask for. Statutes change — confirm anything here with a licensed attorney in your state before you rely on it. Find a family lawyer in your state →
Your state
The law evolved and progressed. Most fathers' paperwork didn't.
Presumptions changed. Defaults changed. Thresholds changed. An order written before a change follows the rules that were in force when it was entered, not the ones in force now. All fifty states and the District of Columbia, verified against the controlling statute. Six jurisdictions presume equal parenting time. Thirty presume nothing at all. Which group each state falls in is on its card below, with the citation.
What this page gives you
Pick your state below and seven things come back.
It is not only overnights. For each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia, this page holds seven fields, read off the controlling statute rather than off somebody’s summary of it — and only one of the seven is about time percentage.
- 1 The presumption What the court starts from before anyone argues. This is what colors the map below.
- 2 What recently changed The headline amendment and what it did.
- 3 The modification standard What it takes to change an order you already have.
- 4 The relocation rule Trigger distance, notice, and the objection window.
- 5 The child-support model Income Shares, Percentage of Obligor, or Melson.
- 6 Whether overnights move the number And the exact threshold where they start to. This is the one field of the seven that is about time percentage.
- 7 The myth The common misconception about that state, set against what the statute actually says.
Every state carries its citation and a link to the state’s own published text, so you can check any line of it yourself.
What the paid half looks like
The State Reference Packet, opened up.
Everything above this line is free and stays free. The packet is the paid half — your state’s own guideline law, lifted out of the statute books and the court’s own worksheets and set down in one document, with a citation on every line and nothing taken on faith. Below is Florida’s, in specimen. Every state’s is built the same way.
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Specimen 01 — the rule, stated and cited
Income above the top of the chart
The chart stops at $10,000 of combined monthly net income. Above that, the obligation is the $10,000 figure plus a percentage of everything over it — 5% for one child, 7.5% for two, 9.5% for three, 11% for four, 12% for five, 12.5% for six.
Fla. Stat. § 61.30(6)(b) (2025)
Why it matters: above $10,000 the number stops being a lookup and starts being arithmetic. Anyone reading the chart alone gets it wrong.
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Specimen 02 — the schedule, the row you land on
Combined monthly net income — $6,000.00
Children 1 2 3 4 5 6 Basic obligation $1,121 $1,737 $2,175 $2,451 $2,676 $2,860 One row of 185. The packet carries the whole chart — $800 to $10,000 in $50 steps — transcribed from the statute and checked line by line against the court’s own worksheet.
Fla. Stat. § 61.30(6)(a) (2025); Fla. Fam. L. R. P. Form 12.902(e), rev. 06/25
Why it matters: this is the figure the rest of the worksheet is built from. The packet cites the row it comes from.
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Specimen 03 — what “income” actually means here
Florida runs on net, not gross
Seven things come out before the chart is touched: income taxes at your actual filing status, FICA or self-employment tax, mandatory union dues, mandatory retirement, health insurance excluding the child’s, other child support actually paid, and spousal support actually paid.
The worksheet takes this figure straight off line 27 of the financial affidavit — the same document explained line by line in the free walkthrough.
Fla. Stat. § 61.30(3)–(5) (2025)
Why it matters: most arguments about the number are really arguments about this list, and most fathers have never seen it written out.
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Specimen 04 — the line your overnights have to cross
73 overnights
Twenty percent of the year, to the night. Reach it and the calculation changes shape: the basic obligation is multiplied by 1.5 before it is divided between the parents, and each parent’s share is then set against his time.
Seventy-two nights and none of that happens. The packet gives the threshold, the multiplier and the cross-credit method, each with its own subsection.
Fla. Stat. § 61.30(11)(b)1, (11)(b)8 (2025)
Why it matters: it is the one number in the whole scheme that is still open before the order is signed.
Every packet is stamped with what it was read from. Florida’s current edition: 2025 Florida Statutes · worksheet Form 12.902(e) revised 06/25 · federal poverty guideline effective January 13, 2026 · read and verified September 23, 2026. When Florida changes any of it, your packet is reissued and you are told what moved — at no further cost, for as long as you own it.
And the part nobody else publishes
Where Florida’s own documents disagree with each other.
Reading a state’s guideline law closely enough to rebuild it means finding the places where the state’s own statute and its own official forms do not answer the question they raise. Those go in a second document, shipped beside the packet. Two of Florida’s:
- Nothing published explains how to read an income between the rows. The chart moves in $50 steps. A combined net income of $5,975 falls between two rows — and neither the statute nor Form 12.902(e) says whether you round, interpolate, or take the lower row. Two honest people run the same case and get different numbers, and both can cite the form.
- The state’s own worksheet produces a figure that is not the final obligation. Form 12.902(e) returns the basic obligation. Work-related child care and the children’s health and dental premiums are added on top and allocated separately under § 61.30(7)–(8). A father who reads the worksheet result as his number is budgeting against the wrong figure, and often does not find out until it matters.
Florida has more than two. So does every other state. The full list for your state ships with the packet, each item written against the document it was found in.
Both documents, for your state, are included from First Draft upward — and reissued free every time your state changes the law underneath them.
See what that costs →
What to do about it
Your state's own statute, schedule and rule text — in one packet.
Everything above is free and always will be. The State Reference Packet is the rest of it: the guideline text with a citation for every line, the schedule, what your state requires a parenting plan to contain, and what we found wrong in its own published documents — reissued free whenever your state changes it. It is included from First Draft up. See what it costs →
Follow along
One name, everywhere.
Same handle on every platform, so you never have to guess which account is the real one. What gets posted is the same thing this site is: what the law actually says, and what it is worth in nights.