Child Support Lawyer in Austin, Texas

Child support in Texas is a formula, until it is not

Most Texas child support starts as arithmetic. The court takes the paying parent’s monthly net resources, applies a percentage set by statute, and that is the order. Knowing the formula is the difference between accepting a number and understanding it.

Where it stops being arithmetic is at the edges: a parent who is self-employed, a parent supporting children in two homes, income that is seasonal or paid in cash, a child with needs the guideline never contemplated. Those are the cases worth having someone in.

The guideline percentages

Texas Family Code section 154.125 sets the guideline as a percentage of the paying parent’s monthly net resources:

The right-hand column is what the guideline produces for a parent at or above the ceiling. Between $1,000 a month and the ceiling, the same percentage applies to the actual figure. Below $1,000 a month section 154.125(c) sets a lower schedule instead: 15 percent for one child, 20 for two, 25 for three, 30 for four and 35 for five.

The cap rose on 1 September 2025, and it matters

The guideline percentages apply only up to a ceiling on monthly net resources. On 1 September 2025 that ceiling rose from $9,200 to $11,700, the first increase since 2019. It is not a figure the Legislature sets. Under section 154.125 the Office of the Attorney General, acting as the state’s Title IV-D agency, recalculates it for inflation every six years and publishes it in the Texas Register. This was that scheduled adjustment.

For a higher-earning parent that is a real change. Guideline support for one child moved from $1,840 a month to $2,340. If your order was set before September 2025, it was calculated against the old ceiling. That alone does not reopen it, but combined with the modification rules below it is often the reason an order is now out of step with what a court would do today.

What counts as net resources

Net resources is a defined term, not simply take-home pay. Section 154.062 counts nearly everything coming in:

• Wages, salary, commissions, overtime, tips and bonuses
• Self-employment income, after ordinary business expenses
• Rental income, interest, dividends and royalties
• Severance, retirement and pension benefits, annuities
• Unemployment, disability and workers’ compensation benefits, though supplemental security income and non-service-connected VA disability pension benefits are excluded by statute
• Gifts, prizes, and spousal maintenance being received

From that total the court subtracts social security taxes, federal income tax calculated for a single person claiming one personal exemption and the standard deduction, state income tax where it applies, union dues, and what the parent pays for the child’s court-ordered health insurance, dental insurance or cash medical support. One deduction gets missed a lot in Austin. A parent who does not pay social security taxes, which includes teachers and many city and county employees, also deducts the retirement contributions they are required to make as a condition of employment.

Two things surprise people. A new spouse’s income is not counted. And a parent who is deliberately underemployed can be assessed on earning capacity rather than on what they are choosing to earn.

When the guideline is not the answer

A court can order above or below the guideline where the evidence supports it. The most common reasons in Travis and Williamson counties:

• The paying parent supports children in more than one household, which reduces the percentage under sections 154.128 and 154.129
• The child has medical, educational or disability needs the guideline does not reach
• Possession is close to equal, so both homes carry real cost
• Income is genuinely irregular, and an averaged figure is fairer than a snapshot

Medical support and dental support are ordered in addition to the percentage, not inside it. That catches people out when they compare their order to a friend’s.

When the number needs to change, or is not being paid

Support does not adjust itself. A job lost, a raise, a child’s needs changing: none of it moves the order until a court signs a new one, and the court can reach back only as far as the earlier of the date the other parent was served with citation or the date they appeared in the case, not the date you filed. Filing starts the case, but it is service that protects the money, so the two should happen close together. Two things open a support modification in Texas. A material and substantial change, or the three-year rule: three years passed and the guideline amount now differs from the order by 20 percent or $100 a month. For the first of those the court measures the change from the earlier of the date the order was signed or, where the order came out of a mediated or collaborative settlement, the date that agreement was signed, which can be months before the decree. One exception matters here. If your current amount comes from an agreed order that already departs from the guideline, higher or lower, the three-year route is closed and you would need to show a material and substantial change instead. Because the cap rose in September 2025, a lot of older orders now clear that bar without anyone’s life changing at all.

Unpaid support is a different problem with sharper tools. Arrears earn six percent simple interest a year on the part of the delinquency that is more than one month’s ordered payment, do not go away in bankruptcy, and can be collected through wage withholding, tax refund intercepts, licence suspension and, for wilful non-payment, contempt. Two different deadlines apply, and they are far apart. A motion asking the court to hold someone in contempt must be filed within two years of the date the child becomes an adult or the date the support obligation ends. A motion asking the court to confirm the arrears and enter a money judgment has ten years from that same date. Because support often runs past a child’s eighteenth birthday to high-school graduation, the clock does not always start at eighteen.

Both routes, what to bring, and how the hearing runs are laid out on our modifications and enforcement page. If your order is more than three years old, that page is worth ten minutes before you call anyone.

How long child support lasts

Under section 154.001 the obligation runs until the child turns eighteen or graduates from high school, whichever happens later, provided the child stays enrolled and meets the attendance requirements. It ends earlier if the child marries, has the disabilities of minority removed, or dies.

The test is not about filing early. A court has to find that the child requires substantial care and personal supervision because of a mental or physical disability and will not be capable of self-support, and that the disability, or the cause of it, existed on or before the child’s eighteenth birthday. A suit can be filed whatever the child’s age, so an adult child is not automatically out of time, but that eighteenth-birthday condition still has to be met, which is why medical and school records are worth gathering early.

If the Attorney General is already involved

Many Austin families meet child support through the Office of the Attorney General Child Support Division rather than through a private case. The OAG can establish paternity, obtain an order, and enforce it, and its services cost little or nothing.

What is worth understanding is who the OAG represents. It represents the State’s interest in the child being supported. It is not your attorney and it does not advise you. It also does not handle custody or possession, so if the schedule is part of your problem, an OAG case will not reach it.

Related services