Houston Divorce Lawyer Blog

One of the most far-reaching revisions to the Texas Family Code in decades was the increase in the child support guideline cap that went into effect in the Fall of 2007.

The statute is Texas Family Code Section 154.125.

This was the first time since 1995 that the amount of the cap had been raised. The increase will only impact cases were the payor makes over $100,000 per year, but my guess is that literally tens of thousands of divorce and paternity orders per year in Texas fall into this category and will now yield a higher child support amount.

Under the old guidelines a Court was limited to considering the first $6,000/ month of payor “net resources” (a statutorily defined term that is usually close to the payor’s after-tax pay). The amendment raised this cap amount to $7,500/ month.

The end result is that a court setting child support under the guidelines in a case where the payor has an annual gross income of $125,000 and one child will be setting the child support at $1,500/month. Under the old law this would have been $1,200/month.

It should be noted that the amendment did not automatically effect previous orders and applied only to cases filed on or after September 1st.

Anyone receiving child support under an existing order who was subject to the old cap may have the right to a child support increase based on this statutory change by filing a modification case. Given the large number of existing child support orders that were set based on the old cap, there are probably a huge number of cases in the state where there are very good grounds for a modification.