If you’re trying to calculate child support and one parent is working and the other is unemployed, perhaps from a recently high paying position, if that parent would normally be paying child support anyway, then yes they’re going to have to pay something, but again trying to figure out what income you base child support on can be a challenge. If someone is unemployed, if they’re receiving unemployment benefits on a temporary basis, the court will probably use the unemployment benefit as the basis for their income for child support. If someone has been unemployed for a long time, the court may impute an income to them. They will make something up that the court feels is fair based on that person’s background and their whether they’ve tried to get a job or not.