In a divorce, you can negotiate your own child-support agreement without the help of a judge. Start by reviewing the following: a budget that reflects the cost of raising your children; your estimated post-divorce budget and your spouse's; and your state's child-support guidelines. You and your spouse likely will want to provide your children with more than what the guidelines indicate because they generally define the minimum amount of support to be paid.

Remember to factor inflation into your child-support agreement, because ultimately, increases in the inflation rate decrease the value of the child support that one spouse pays the other. A practical way of dealing with this issue is to build nominal increases in the amount of child support into your agreement.