Our Methodology: How Every Calculator Is Built

Where Our Formulas Come From

We start with the primary source — the actual state statute or court rule — not secondary summaries or legal blogs. For child support in California, the formula comes from Cal. Fam. Code § 4055. For overtime in Texas, it comes from the federal FLSA (29 U.S.C. § 207). Every formula is documented with its statutory citation on the calculator page, and we link to official government and bar resources where you can verify the underlying rule yourself.

When a state publishes an official worksheet, guideline manual, or administrative rule, we treat that document as the controlling reference for how inputs should be interpreted — gross vs. net income, parenting-time adjustments, caps on obligor income, and similar variables. Our editorial team maps those rules into calculator logic step by step so the output reflects the public guideline structure, not a national average or a single-state template copied across jurisdictions.

Each calculator page lists the statutes, regulations, or court rules we relied on in the "Legal Sources & References" section. Where a federal agency publishes the authoritative interpretation — for example, DOL guidance on overtime or garnishment — we link to that agency directly. We do not treat attorney blogs, forum posts, or AI summaries as sources of truth; they may help us discover a citation, but the citation itself must resolve to a primary document you can open and read.

State-specific pages (such as child support in California or wage garnishment in Texas) inherit the same discipline: the formula on the page must match the rule in force for that jurisdiction, and any statewide exceptions called out in the statute are reflected in the inputs or help text rather than hidden in code comments.

What Our Calculators Can and Cannot Do

Our calculators estimate guideline amounts based on the inputs you provide. They cannot account for:

• Judicial discretion to deviate from guidelines
• Undisclosed income or assets
• Complex ownership structures or trusts
• Recent court orders that modify standard guidelines
• Pending legislative changes not yet in effect

These limitations are why we always recommend consulting a licensed attorney before relying on any estimate for legal decisions. A calculator can help you understand the statutory framework and produce a planning number; it cannot replace fact-finding, discovery, or advocacy in court.

Personal injury and wrongful-death tools illustrate another boundary: multipliers and damage categories vary by venue, insurance limits, and comparative-fault rules. Our injury calculators produce illustrative ranges based on common negotiation frameworks; they do not predict what a jury will award or what a carrier will pay after medical liens and policy caps are applied.

Employment calculators (overtime, final pay, garnishment) depend on how your employer classifies hours, applies exemptions, and processes payroll. Federal law sets floors, but state law may be more protective. Always compare your result to the official resources linked on the calculator page before disputing pay or withholding with an employer.

How We Keep Calculators Current

State laws change. When a legislature updates guidelines, we update the calculator within 30 days of the change taking effect. Each calculator page shows a "Last reviewed" date. If you notice the date is more than 6 months old, contact us at contact@thelegalcalc.com — we may have missed an update.

We also monitor federal baseline rules that overlay state law — for example, FLSA overtime floors, CCPA wage-garnishment limits, and federal child-support enforcement policy. When agency guidance or published rates change, we reconcile calculator defaults and on-page citations so users are not looking at stale thresholds.

Major updates are noted in our internal review log and reflected in the visible "Last reviewed" stamp on affected tools. Minor clarifications — fixing a broken government URL, improving help text, or correcting a typo in a citation — may ship without a full formula change but still trigger a review date bump when the underlying legal content was re-verified.

Limitations of Income Shares Models

Most state child support calculators use "income shares" models that require both parents' incomes, custody split, and additional costs. Our calculators implement these models as described in each state's guidelines. However, the official results in court use specialized software (DissoMaster in California, for example) that may calculate slightly differently based on rounding and jurisdiction-specific adjustments.

Percentage-of-income states (such as Texas under Tex. Fam. Code § 154.125) follow a different architecture. We label the model on each state page so you know which statutory path applies before you interpret the monthly figure.

Add-ons — health insurance, childcare, extraordinary medical expenses, and tax-related adjustments — are implemented only where the state guideline explicitly provides a method. If your order assigns a non-standard split of costs, enter the values your order requires or use the tool for baseline guideline math only.

How to Report Errors

If you find a formula error or outdated information, email contact@thelegalcalc.com with the calculator URL, the state, and the specific issue. We investigate all reported errors and correct confirmed mistakes within 5 business days.

For broader questions about our editorial process, see our Editorial Standards and About pages.