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costs. For another, the calculators are all different from one another, and the free one that you are using will give a somewhat different result from the official one that the judge would use in court. And as discussed above, the guidelines are not necessarily the be-all and end-all of what a judge would order. If you take the matter to court, you will have the opportunity to try to persuade the judge that even though the guideline says that support should be a certain amount, other factors should be considered and the amount should be more or less.

The list below shows you where to find your state's official child support calculator, if there is one, or worksheets, guidelines, or regulations. However, the tools on those sites, especially some of the worksheets or regulations, may not be as easy to use as the simple calculators available on www.alllaw.com. You'll have to determine what works best for you.

If there's nothing listed, that means the state doesn't provide a calculator and that a lawyer, the free calculators at www.alllaw.com, or a commercial calculator that you pay for are your options for estimating support.

At the website listed, sometimes you'll have to use your common sense and click through to the page that has the information you want. In every case where you need to do that, it's very clear what links you need.

State Child Support Calculators

State Child Support Calculators (continued)

How Support Is Paid Each Month

Once you've agreed on an amount or the court has decided on one for you-your next step is to figure out how it will be paid. You have a few options:

• You can agree that the paying spouse will send checks directly to the recipient, on a schedule you set up together.

• The recipient can apply a wage garnishment (also known as income assignment or wage assignment), making the paying spouse's employer responsible for deducting the support amount from the paycheck and sending it.

• The recipient can register the child support order with your state's child support enforcement agency, and the paying spouse (or the spouse's employer) can pay the support to the agency, which in turn pays the recipient spouse.

Each of these options is discussed in detail below.

Direct Payment

If you're entirely certain that the paying spouse will never miss a payment and you want to keep things really simple, you can agree on the amount and date of the payments and just go from there. Your final order and your marital settlement agreement will set out the terms of the support payments, so if you're supposed to get support and don't, you can always go in and enforce the terms (with a wage garnishment, for example) later. But it will take longer than if you put the enforcement mechanisms to work right away, as the methods described below do.

If you do decide on direct payment, include a provision in your settlement agreement saying that the paying spouse's wages can be garnished if there's no payment for a certain number of months. States automatically include wage garnishments in child support orders, but it's up to you whether you want to ask the employer to exercise the garnishment. (There's more about wage garnishments below.) If the paying spouse is self-employed, you might want to consider having the paying spouse post a bond or deposit a few months' worth of support into a separate account, with an agreement that the recipient spouse can withdraw money from the account only if support isn't paid for a certain number of months.

Wage Garnishment

All child support orders include a provision allowing automatic deductions (garnishment) from the paying spouse's paycheck. There are limits on how much can be taken from each paycheck, but at the very least, it will be a start on getting support. This works only if the paying spouse has an employer-you can't garnish the self-employed. You don't have to use a wage garnishment; it's up to you. But having an automatic deduction is a good way for both spouses to make sure support arrives on time each month.

Once you have a court order stating the amount