Pursuant to Act 948 of 1989, as amended, codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 9-12-312(a) and the Family Support Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-485 (1988), the Court adopted and published Administrative Order Number 10, titled “Child Support Guidelines” (“Guidelines”). Pursuant to Act 907 of 2019, codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 9-12-312(a)(4), the attached revised monthly “Family Support Chart” (“Chart”) is based on an Income Shares Model. The attached Chart therefore supersedes any prior payor-income-based family support chart. (Section II.1 discusses when this Administrative Order’s incorporation of the Income Shares Model affects existing child-support orders.) This Administrative Order includes and incorporates by reference the “Forms” Addendum: Sample Calculation, Sample Language for Child-Support Orders, Family Support Chart, Child Support Worksheet (“Worksheet”), and the revised Affidavit of Financial Means.
These Guidelines are based on the Income Shares Model, developed by the Child Support Guidelines Project of the National Center for State Courts. The Income Shares Model is based on the concept that children should receive the same proportion of parental income that they would have received had the parents lived together and shared financial resources. The best available economic data on child-rearing expenditures was used to develop the model. A more detailed explanation of the Income Shares Model and the underlying economic evidence used to support it is contained in Development of Guidelines for Child Support Orders , Report to the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, September 1987 (National Center for State Courts, Denver, Colorado). The September 2019 Review of the Arkansas Child Support Guidelines, an Analysis of Economic Data, Development of Income Shares Charts, and Other Considerations, prepared by Jane Venohr, Ph.D., is available at www.arcourts.gov/forms-and-publications/arkansas-child-support-guidelines
Under the revised Family Support Chart, each parent’s share is that parent’s prorated share of the two parents’ combined income. The Chart reflects the average amount of money that families in the United States spend on their children. Differences between Arkansas prices and prices across the United States more generally have been accounted for using an index that the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) developed. The Chart also considers and accounts for:
•federal and state income taxes and FICA;
•average child-rearing expenditures using current measurements developed by Professor David Betson using the Rothbarth methodology to separate the children’s share of expenditures from total expenditures;
•out-of-pocket medical expenses of $250.00 per child per year.
The Chart excludes parental expenditures for work-related childcare, the child’s share of health insurance premiums, and out-of-pocket medical expenses over $250.00 per child per year.
These Guidelines and the accompanying Worksheet assume that the parent to whom support is owed (payee parent) is spending his or her calculated share directly on the child. For the parent with the obligation to pay support (payor parent), the pro-rata charted amount establishes the base level of child support to be given to the payee parent. The base amount may, however, be adjusted to account for work-related childcare expenditures, the child’s share of the health insurance premium, out-of-pocket medical expenses exceeding $250.00 per child per year, the self-support reserve, or other factors a court determines to be in the best interest of a child or children.