In West Virginia, courts use an ‘income shares’ model for calculating child support payments. The idea is to keep the same level of support that the child would have received if his or her parents never divorced or separated in the first place. The parents’ incomes are combined and then the court divides the basic level of support between the two.
There are, sometimes, circumstances that can change the situation slightly. For instance, when parents share physical custody so each parent physically cares for the child for a specific number of days each year, the support calculation method is changed. This model multiplies the parents’ basic support obligation by one and a half, and then allocates it to each parent by the share of time the parent spends with the child.