Military pay includes base salary, allowances, and other compensation that can be hard to track down—here's how it factors into child support.
Calculating child support can be tricky enough when the parent who owes support earns a regular salary. But when that parent is in the military, the numbers can get even harder to pin down.
Military compensation includes a base salary along with housing and food allowances, hazard pay, and other benefits that aren't always visible on a pay stub, making it easy to underestimate a service member's true earnings. Every state has its own child support guidelines that serve as the starting point for calculating a fair amount of child support, and the military has separate guidelines for temporary support in cases where no state order exists yet.
Here's an overview of how to calculate a service member's actual income using the Leave and Earnings Statement (LES) and why tax-free allowances still count toward support.
Start With Your State's Child Support Guidelines
To calculate child support, start with your state's child support guidelines. If you and the other parent can’t agree on the support amount and a court hasn’t yet weighed in, you can consult military guidelines. Each branch of the military has its own guidelines for appropriate interim family support when the state hasn’t yet established a support order. Generally, however, the amounts are less than what state guidelines provide.
Be aware that it can be difficult to find information about the military’s child support guidelines. If you need to establish interim support, check with your state’s child support enforcement agency or seek help from a military Legal Assistance Office. (You can use the online legal services locator to find an office near you.)
What Counts as Income for a Military Parent
Because military paychecks are unlike any other paychecks, it can be difficult to determine what a service member’s actual pay is. This makes calculating child support challenging because a parent’s income is always the basis for calculating child support. To get started with your state’s child support guidelines, you’ll need to know the service member’s income as well as the amount of any payments the service member is making for the children’s health insurance and for work-related day care.
Start with the service member’s base salary. There’s also a housing allowance, calculated using location, family commitments, and the service member’s pay grade. There are also pay differentials for hazardous assignments and other variations in responsibilities. The service member may be receiving “in-kind” compensation in the form of housing, meals, and other nonmonetary compensation.
In trying to determine the other parent’s income, don’t use a tax return, because some of the income that service members receive is tax-free, and you’ll be working with an amount that’s too low. Instead, use the Leave and Earnings Statement (LES), which is similar to a pay stub but more comprehensive. The LES will show you the service member parent’s basic pay and housing and other allowances, as well as information about how many dependents the service member is claiming and how much accrued leave is available.
The IRS doesn’t tax military housing and food allowances, but most states’ child support guidelines include all income, whether it’s taxable or not. Courts have generally rejected the argument that these allowances should be excluded for the purposes of calculating support because they're tax-free. For example, a California appeals court ruled that Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) and Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) must be included in a service member's gross income when calculating child and spousal support. (In re Marriage of Stanton, 190 Cal. App. 4th 547 (2010).)
Getting Access to Military Pay Records
As always when you’re dealing with the U.S. military, you may not have an easy time getting access to the information you need. If your spouse won't cooperate, you (or, better, your family law attorney) can request a subpoena or court order compelling the service member's finance office to release the LES. Because the LES is treated as a protected personal record, a standalone Freedom of Information Act request is unlikely to succeed without the service member's consent.
For help establishing or enforcing child support, you can also contact your state's child support enforcement agency.
