Colorado child support changed on March 1. Here is the actual math.

I have practiced family law in Colorado since 2011, and in that time I can count on one hand the legal changes that genuinely moved the numbers for ordinary families. What happened on March 1, 2026 is one of them. House Bill 25-1159 rewrote how Colorado calculates child support, and if you have children and an income, it is worth twenty minutes of your attention.

Here is my frustration as a lawyer who reads these things for a living: nearly everything published about the new law tells you that it changed and almost nothing shows you what the change does to an actual family's numbers. So that is what this article is. Three worked examples, with the arithmetic on the table. The figures below were computed with the same engines behind our free child support calculator, which run the statutory tables exactly as the legislature enacted them (how we build and test them).

What actually changed, in plain terms

Four things matter for most families. First, the gate is gone. Under the old law, a parent with 92 overnights or less received no parenting time credit at all. Whether you had 90 overnights or 2 overnights, it was all the same under the prior statute. In contrast, a parent with at least 93 overnights got a huge credit and every additional overnight moved the financial needle. Because of this, families litigated over a single overnight because one night on the child support worksheet moved real money. Now every overnight counts, from the first one, on a graduated curve.

Second, the income schedule reaches much higher than it used to, up to $40,000 a month in combined income, so more high-earning families are inside the formula instead of arguing in the space above it.

Third, the protections for low-earning parents were rebuilt around something called the self-support reserve, which I will explain properly below, because it is the single most misunderstood number in the new law.

Fourth, out-of-pocket medical costs for the children now count from the first dollar. The old rule made a parent absorb the first $250 per child each year before anything would have calculated to be shared.

One important boundary: orders entered before March 1, 2026 stay under the old rules until they are modified. The new math applies when a new order is entered or an old one is changed. If your order is older, hold that thought until the end of this article.

The number nobody explains: $1,831.83

The self-support reserve is the amount of monthly income the law shields so that a parent who pays support can still house and feed themselves. Most articles quote it as a mystery constant. It is not. The statute builds it from the state minimum wage: the standard hourly wage, times 29 hours a week, times 50 weeks a year, divided by 12 months.

Run that for 2026 and you get Colorado's $15.16 minimum wage producing a reserve of $1,831.83 a month. Here is why the derivation matters more than the number: it readjusts itself every January 1, because Colorado's minimum wage adjusts annually. In 2025 the reserve was $1,789.54. The state has already announced a $15.71 wage for 2027, which will make the reserve $1,898.29.

So if you read an article that quotes one reserve figure with no year attached, you now know something the person who wrote it may not: that number has a shelf life. Every figure in this article is a 2026 figure, and our calculator updates each January when the statute's inputs reset.

Example one: the everyday case, and what the dead cliff was worth

Guideline support, new law, 85 overnights	$1,097 per month, paid by Parent A
Same family if Parent A had zero overnights	$1,352 per month
What 85 overnights is worth under the new law	$255 per month
What 85 overnights was worth under the old law	$0

Sit with that last row for a moment. Under the old law, Parent A's 85 overnights, or a real relationship, roughly every other weekend plus a full month of summer, counted for nothing. The support number was the same as if Parent A never saw the children. Under the new law those same overnights reduce the transfer by $255 a month, which is $3,060 a year, because the law finally recognizes that a parent who has the children for any number of overnights is in most cases spending money on the children. That cost is now formally acknowledged and granted by default, instead of a party having to convince a Court that the time spent with their children should move the child support needle.

Every overnight negotiated produces small changes in support. This helps steer the conversation to what is truly in the best interests of the children in terms of overnights, rather than strategically negotiating to reach or avoid that 93rd overnight.

Example two: when the law protects the paycheck

Schedule of Basic Child Support per C.R.S. 14-10-115(7)(b) for $6,700 in combined monthly income and two children	$1,680 per month
Parent A's proportional share of that schedule	$527 per month
What Parent A actually pays under the new law	$228 per month

A straight proportional split would take $527 a month from a parent earning $2,100. The new law does not allow that. Because Parent A's income sits near the $1,831.83 reserve, the statute steps the obligation down through a series of protections, and the actual order comes out at $228.

I want to be direct about why this matters. An order a parent cannot pay does not feed a child. It builds arrears, it breaks the paying parent's housing, and it often creates years of contentious litigation that continues to disrupt lives. The reserve is the legislature deciding that support orders should be built against a real budget, which ultimately serves families not only immediately, but also into the future.

Example three: higher incomes are inside the math now

Combined monthly income	$38,000
Schedule amount at that income, two children	$4,814 per month
Guideline support with the parenting time credit	$2,244 per month, paid by Parent A

Under the old schedule, a household like this sat above the table, in territory where lawyers argued based on circumstances and individual facts. The new schedule runs to $40,000 a month in combined income, so this family gets a real number produced by the formula. Above $40,000 the statute still sets the top of the schedule as a floor and leaves the rest to the court's judgment about the children's reasonable needs.

If your household is in this range, notice what the schedule does not do: it does not scale up in a straight line forever. The law assumes that beyond a point, more parental income stops translating into proportionally more child-related spending. Whether your family sits neatly inside these numbers or has the kind of income that needs argument is exactly the sort of question to bring to a consultation.

What did not change this year

Spousal maintenance, which is Colorado's word for alimony, was not rewritten in 2026. The advisory maintenance formula in C.R.S. 14-10-114 works the way it has since the tax-law adjustments several years ago, and our maintenance calculator runs it in full.

But the two calculations talk to each other, and this is a trap for people running numbers at the kitchen table: when maintenance is paid between the same two parents, the child support worksheet adjusts both incomes with a statutory multiplier before the schedule applies. If you compute each number in isolation, you will get the interaction wrong. It is the single most common error I see in self-prepared worksheets.

If your order is from before March 2026

Your order stays under the old rules until it is modified, and that is precisely why it deserves a fresh look. Colorado allows modification of child support when there is a substantial and continuing change of circumstance that is enough to move the calculation by at least ten percent, and for many families the new law alone moves the number that far, especially where a parent has meaningful overnights that the old law ignored.

That is not the same as saying everyone should run to the courthouse. Modification resets the math in both directions, and a careful review of your existing order against the new worksheet is the honest first step. Run your own numbers with the calculator, then have someone who does this daily check what the worksheet cannot see.

A closing word about why we publish arithmetic instead of headlines. Family law runs on numbers that real families have to live with. You are entitled to see how they are made, to check them, and to understand the real-life effect of those calculations.

This article is general information about Colorado law, not legal advice about your situation. Statutory figures are current as of the review date above and change over time.