Rule 88.01.Presumed Child Support Amount.

Rule 88.01 sits at the center of every Missouri child support case. It tells courts and administrative agencies how to treat the number that comes out of Civil Procedure Form No. 14, the state’s child support calculation worksheet. That number is not automatically the award. It is a presumption — a starting point the law treats as correct unless someone shows otherwise.

The rule works in two steps. First, the decision-maker considers all relevant factors bearing on child support, including the statutory factors that guide the analysis. Second, once a Form 14 amount has been correctly calculated, the rule presumes that figure is the right amount to award. A party who wants a different number has to overcome that presumption.

Overcoming it requires more than disagreement. Unless a party has filed a request under Rule 73.01(c), a written finding, or a specific finding on the record, that the Form 14 amount — after considering the relevant factors — is unjust or inappropriate is enough by itself to rebut the presumption in that case. Only then can the award depart from the calculated figure. This keeps child support predictable across cases while still leaving room for judgment when the standard formula does not fit a family’s circumstances.

Because the presumption depends on a correctly calculated Form 14, disputes under this rule often turn on the inputs feeding the worksheet — income figures, credits, and adjustments — instead of on the rule’s legal standard itself. The rule does not describe those inputs; it governs only how the resulting number is treated once it exists.