Having divorced in Iowa and paying child support there for 3-4 years I do have a sense to how it works. Joint custody means absolutely nothing. It means your XW can't donote your child's kidney without asking your opinion first. I have joint custody with my XW. I still pay CS and lots of it. What you want is "joint physical custody" or to be "primary caregiver". The one considered the primary caregiver gets child support. The names have changed, but the game is the same. If you get joint physical custody you can probably swing no CS. If you have them more than 150 days (or something like that) you can probably get a reduction in your CS. But I did the math once. If my XW had primary physical custody and I had them 365 days a year the reduction would only be like 20-30% a month or something ridiculous. Check the child support guidelines for Iowa. They are online.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
I have joint custody with my XW. I still pay CS and lots of it. What you want is "joint physical custody" or to be "primary caregiver". The one considered the primary caregiver gets child support. The names have changed, but the game is the same. If you get joint physical custody you can probably swing no CS. If you have them more than 150 days (or something like that) you can probably get a reduction in your CS. But I did the math once. If my XW had primary physical custody and I had them 365 days a year the reduction would only be like 20-30% a month or something ridiculous. Check the child support guidelines for Iowa. They are online. 