Are you paying too much in weekly support?

When translating support from a monthly payment amount to a weekly payment amount, family court attorneys and judges divide the weekly amount by 4 1/3.  That is based on 52 weeks in 12 months and 52 divided by 12 is 4 1/3.

However this math isn’t entirely accurate.  First of all there are 365 days in a year and 52 times 7 is 364.  Thus in a seven year period there’s an extra week.  Further we forgot leap year.  Every four years there’s an extra day so every 28 years there’s an extra week.  There won’t be a leap year in the year 2100 but I pity the poor obligor still paying support in 2100.

Thus every 28 years there are five “additional” weeks: one due to leap years and four due to the “additional” day each year.  While for support purposes we treat 28 years as having 1456 weeks, that period actually contains 1461 weeks.  This is 52.17857142 (the underlined portion repeats ad infinitum) weeks per year or 4.3482142857 weeks per month.

So the answer to this blog’s question is yes: 0.34% too much support.  On a support obligation of $1,000.00 per month that’s an extra $0.78 per week ($230.77 versus $229.98).  Anyone bothered by paying this extra amount should demand more accurate math.