Courtready has launched a free Canadian child support calculator that computes the Federal Guidelines table amount and shows the legal reasoning behind every figure. It covers sole, shared, split, and mixed parenting across every province and territory.
Many online child support calculators give you a number without much of an explanation. You enter an income, you get a monthly figure, and you have no way to check where it came from or whether it fits your situation. For a self-represented parent trying to understand what the law actually requires, a bare number is not much help.
We built ours to do the opposite, because it shows how we arrived at those numbers.
The Canadian Child Support Calculator computes the base amount of monthly support under the Federal Child Support Guidelines (SOR/97-175). It is free, it requires no signup, and it works for almost every province and territory.
What the calculator does
Enter each parent’s annual income and province, mark where each child lives, and the calculator returns the monthly table amount. It handles the four arrangements the Guidelines treat differently: sole custody under section 3, shared parenting under section 9, split parenting under section 8, and mixed arrangements that combine them. The Quebec table is included, with a note that when both parents reside in Quebec the provincial model applies instead of the federal table.
Every number comes with its reasoning
Alongside the amount, the calculator produces a plain-language explanation of how it got there: which section of the Guidelines applies, which provincial table it read, which income bracket the paying parent fell into, and which authority governs. Nothing is hidden behind a single output box.
The form that explanation takes depends on the arrangement. In a sole-custody case, the tool names the provincial table it used, shows the income bracket, and states the monthly amount under section 3. In a split-parenting case, it calculates each parent’s notional amount separately and shows the set-off under section 8. In a shared-parenting case, it walks through the set-off and cites Contino v. Leonelli-Contino, 2005 SCC 63, the Supreme Court of Canada decision that governs how the section 9 amount is approached.
Each result also carries a short verification fingerprint. If a former partner runs the same inputs, they get the same fingerprint. That lets both sides confirm they are working from identical numbers without exchanging anything more than a short code.
What it does not do yet
The calculator is deliberately scoped to the base table amount on employment income. It does not yet calculate section 7 special or extraordinary expenses, the high-income discretion under section 4, undue hardship under section 10, or spousal support. Those features are coming. Treating the table amount as a clean, well-sourced starting point, rather than a final answer, is the honest way to use it.
Who it is for
The tool is built for self-represented litigants who need to understand the Guidelines, and for lawyers and mediators who want a fast, transparent starting figure they can check at a glance. It is a reference tool, not legal advice, and every result says so.
Family law sees some of the highest rates of self-representation in the country, and child support is often the first number a separating parent has to make sense of. A calculator that explains itself, rather than one that hands over a figure and asks you to trust it, gives that parent something they can actually carry into a negotiation or a courtroom. That is the point of building it this way.
We built this to make the Guidelines a little easier to read.