In early 2026, the Department of Justice launched the long awaited Child Maintenance Guidelines and the Child Maintenance calculator.
The Child Maintenance Guidelines explain how the calculator was devised, it’s financial logic and its limitations.
The purpose of the Child Maintenance Calculator was to support families to work out an amount of child maintenance for their children and hopefully reduce the need to go to court because of child maintenance.
It will help parents to make arrangements directly or with help from a solicitor or a family mediation service.
*In order to use the Child Maintenance Calculator you will need
1) both parents gross incomes
2) how much parenting time each parent has on a weekly basis
3) the children’s ages.
Please be aware that the Child Maintenance Calculator is a support tool only for parents looking to manage child maintenance informally between themselves. It is not appropriate to be used by all parents and relies on both parents being honest about their finances.
It will not be used by the Family Courts and cannot be used as evidence in the family courts.
Limitations of the Child Maintenance calculator:
- Costs related to disability, childcare, education, medical needs are not accounted for in this calculator. As these costs can be significant, parents should take them into account if using the calculator for more day-to-day expenses. Generally, these costs are divided equally between parents.
- If either parent has significant assets, such as property, it may not be useful.
- If both parents combined income is €288,956 or higher, this calculator is not suitable.
- If you are a kinship care (a family member/friend whose taken over the full time care of a child) this calculator is not appropriate to use.
- If a parent is paying child maintenance for more than one child where the children are from different relationships, the calculator may not be useful.
- This calculator is unsuitable where there are dependants with significant earnings, property or other financial resources.
- It may not reflect the particular circumstances of some families where there are more than three children.*