A throng of attorneys and judges (not shown above) attended a side-by-side comparison of the only five child support programs that are certified by the California Judicial Council.

The programs presented were:

        CalSupport PRO

        The new DCSS online calculator

        DissoMaster

        SupporTax

        Xspouse

In five scenarios designed to give the programs a workout, all five programs produced virtually identical results. What, then, one might ask, is the difference?

Ease of use. The consensus of the meeting was that CalSupport is by far the easiest professional program to use.

Price. CalSupport is by far the most affordable professional program.

        CalSupport costs $149 the first year and $125 for annual updates.

        Xspouse costs $299 each and every year.

        DissoMaster starts at $450 for one user, more for additional users.

        SupporTax starts at $477 for one user, more for additional users.

        DCSS online calculator is free, but it is not a program, you can't
            keep client files, there are no analytical reports.

Fast response. Every year since 1995, CalSupport has released its annual updates with new tax tables and rules in mid-January. SupportTax and DissoMaster have typically come straggling in around March, April or later.

When users think up a new feature that we feel everyone will like, we get it out in a week or two. The complex foster-child feature was added in ten days.

Transparency. You will find every option in CalSupport in plain sight on the surface and all choices are set out in reports. The other programs have many obscure settings hidden away in dialogs and the reports don't show all the settings that were used to get the reported results. At the Bench-Bar conference, presenters passed out two pages of notes on how to use the settings on the DCSS online calculator in order to get accurate results.

Better Reports. Unlike the other programs, CalSupport produces reports that are clear and easy to understand. They are designed to help parents communicate and discuss the accuracy of data entered and options selected. CalSupport changes the argument from "How much support?" to a discussion of "Are these figures accurate?"

Support. If you have a problem, we typically email a response in one day, for really tough issues, it might take a couple of days. Have you ever tried getting help from West Corporation?

Now you know why family law attorneys, CFLS attorneys, mediators, accountants and financial planners are turning to CalSupport.

To sum it all up . . .