Child Support in Korea: How much money I can get for my child?

Usually, a child has two parents. When one parent has custody of the child while the other does not, the non-custodial parent should pay a certain amount of money to the custodial parent for the support of the child, since both parents should share the responsibility of child’s expenses.

This situation can be caused by various reasons. If the parents were married but now want divorce, they should settle the amount of child support in the Family Court as well as settling other matters (alimony, division of property, child custody, etc.) about their divorce in Korea. If the parents were never married, but only dated each other or just had a sex together, the custodial parent can file a suit for child support against another, which is also under the jurisdiction of Family Court.

The problem is how much money should be paid. Naturally, the custodial parent would want more money, while the non-custodial parent would want to pay less money as possible. This is why the Seoul Family Court set the “Standard of Estimating Child Support” in 2017.

The horizontal axis is the amount of both parents’ monthly income (not only their monthly salary, but also rental income, interests, pension, etc.) combined. The vertical axis is the child’s age. The more the parents’ monthly income is, and the older the child gets, the standard amount of child support increases.

“NOTICE: This table has been updated by the Seoul Family Court on December 2021. Please click the link to check out the new standard of estimating child support.”

The Seoul Family Court also set the range of reasonable amounts of Child Support for every section.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you are a newly single parent raising a fifteen-year-old daughter and an eight-year-old son. Your monthly income is 1,800,000 won while your ex-spouse’s is 2,700,000 won, which means your combined income is 4,500,000 won, in the range of “5,000,000 ~ 5,990,000 won.” Your daughter is in the range of “Age 15 ~18” and your son is “Age 6 ~ 11.” Then the standard amount of child support would be 1,376,000 won for your daughter, and 1,136,000 won for your son, as you can see below.

Now we should calculate the share of obligation of you and your ex-husband, based on the ratio of each parent’s monthly income. As we mentioned earlier, your monthly income is 1,800,000 won while your ex-spouse’s is 2,700,000 won, which means your combined income is 4,500,000 won.

In conclusion, you can get 1,507,200 won from your ex-husband every month as child support. 825,600 won for your daughter, and 681,600 won for your son, 1,507,200 won in total.

Remember that this was only a standard example. The amount of child support can increase or decrease based on other various factors. For instance, if the child is ill and needs a large amount of money for medical fee, the amount increases. If the non-custodial parent is going through a bankruptcy procedure, the amount decreases. It also depends on where the child is living, because usually living in the city costs more money than living in the country in Korea, so the amount can increase if the child is living in the city but decrease if the child is living in the farm or something.