If your income has dropped, or your co-parent's has climbed, or the children are spending far more nights at your house than the order says, the question is usually the same. Can the child support amount be changed, and how. In Florida the answer is yes, a support order is modifiable, but only one way. A judge has to sign a new order. Until that happens, the existing order is the only number that counts.
That single point is worth more than anything else on this page. Parents agree between themselves all the time to raise, lower, or pause child support, shake on it, and run the arrangement for years. Florida courts do not treat that as a modification. The old order stays in force, the unpaid difference accrues as arrears, and a judge later asked to sort it out generally enforces what the order says rather than what the parents did. Arrears that have already accrued are not something a court can simply erase. If you need the number changed, the change has to be filed.
What Florida requires before support can be changed
Modification of a support order is governed by F.S. § 61.14. The threshold question is whether there has been a substantial change in circumstances since the last order was entered. Florida courts have long read that standard to require a change that is substantial, material, permanent, and involuntary, and the parent asking for the change carries the burden of proving it.
Each of those words does real work. Permanent filters out a two week gap between jobs or one slow quarter. Involuntary filters out a change the parent chose to make. And the change generally has to be one that was not already contemplated when the existing order was entered, so an event the final judgment already anticipated is a weak foundation for a petition.
The 15 percent or $50 test
There is also an arithmetic gate. Under F.S. § 61.30(1)(b), the difference between the existing monthly obligation and the amount the guidelines would produce on today's figures has to be at least 15 percent or $50, whichever amount is greater, before the guidelines can be treated as establishing a substantial change in circumstances.
Two things about that test are commonly misread. First, it is whichever is greater, not whichever is easier: on a modest obligation the $50 figure controls, and on a large one the 15 percent figure does. Second, clearing the math does not by itself decide the case. The guideline difference supplies a basis for finding a substantial change. The parent still has to show what changed and that the change meets the standard described above.
Income, and what happens when a parent is out of work
Because the guideline number is driven by both parents' net incomes, most modification cases are really disputes about income. Florida defines income broadly, well past a W-2: self-employment earnings, commissions, bonuses, rental income, disability payments, and retirement distributions all belong in the calculation.
F.S. § 61.30 also allows a court to impute income to a parent it finds voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, absent physical or mental incapacity or other circumstances beyond that parent's control. The imputed figure is built from that parent's recent work history, occupational qualifications, and the prevailing earnings level in the community, and the party asking for imputation has to put on competent, substantial evidence rather than an accusation.
In practice, that is the line between a layoff or a medically necessary reduction in hours on one side, and a resignation or a chosen move into lower paid work on the other. Documentation is what separates them, and it is far easier to gather in the weeks after the change than a year later.
Why the filing date is the date that matters
F.S. § 61.14 allows a court to modify support retroactively to the date the action or supplemental action for modification was filed, as equity requires. It does not permit the court to reach back further than that.
The consequence is concrete. Every month between the day your circumstances changed and the day your petition is filed is a month at the old number, whatever the case eventually produces. A parent whose hours were cut in January and who files in September has given up the months in between. That is the reason a parent who genuinely cannot pay the ordered amount should be filing rather than negotiating quietly.
When time-sharing changes, support usually changes too
Support and the parenting plan are tied together by the overnight count. Under F.S. § 61.30(11)(b), when each parent exercises at least 20 percent of the overnights in a year, which works out to 73 nights, the calculation shifts to a formula that credits each parent for the time the child spends in that household. Crossing that line in either direction can move the monthly figure substantially, which is why schedule changes and support changes belong in the same conversation.
The same caution applies here. An informal change in where the children actually sleep does not change the order. The parenting plan governs, and support follows the plan. If the schedule has genuinely and durably changed, the plan itself is what needs to be addressed, and time-sharing carries its own standard under F.S. § 61.13.
The Department of Revenue route, and its limits
Not every modification begins with a petition drafted by a lawyer. The Florida Department of Revenue Child Support Program administers a large share of Florida support cases, and either parent in a Program case can ask it to review the order. The Program gathers financial information from both parents, applies its own published review criteria, and moves to modify where a change appears warranted. Parents in Program cases also receive periodic notice of the right to request a review.
Two limits are worth knowing. The Program's review criteria are its own and are not identical to what a circuit judge weighs in a contested case, and a review takes time. More importantly, a Program attorney represents the Department. That attorney is not your attorney and owes you no duty of loyalty or confidentiality, even when the outcome you want and the Department's position line up. Where the case involves self-employment income, imputation, or a disputed schedule, post-judgment modification through the circuit court is the more usual route.
What happens when a child ages out
Under F.S. § 61.13(1)(a), child support terminates on a child's 18th birthday, unless the child is dependent in fact, is between 18 and 19, and remains in high school performing in good faith with a reasonable expectation of graduating before turning 19, or unless the parties agreed otherwise. Support may also continue for a child who is dependent because of a qualifying disability.
Florida orders are also required to state what will be owed for any remaining children once one of them is no longer entitled to support, with the month, day, and year the reduction takes effect. If your order carries that schedule, the step down happens on its own. If it is an older order that does not, the reduction is not automatic and the order has to be addressed rather than assumed.
A practical sequence
- Read the existing order and find the support paragraph and any step down schedule. What it says is the starting point, not what either parent remembers.
- Gather proof of what changed: the termination letter, pay records, medical documentation, or a real calendar of overnights.
- Run the guideline calculation on current figures, so you know whether the 15 percent or $50 difference is even there.
- If you and your co-parent agree on a new number, put it in writing and submit it for entry as a court order. Agreement makes the case far simpler. It does not remove the filing.
- Keep paying the ordered amount until a new order is entered. Stopping does not preserve an argument. It builds arrears.
In a modification, the sequence tends to matter more than the argument. Post-judgment matters for Tampa families are heard in the Hillsborough County Circuit Court, Family Law Division, at the George Edgecomb Courthouse, 800 E. Twiggs Street. Rechel & Associates has been serving Tampa Bay families since 1992. If you are weighing a change, it is worth looking at before another month passes at the old number.