How we check

Every number here has two parents: the statute and the agency

A threshold number decides whether a woman is legal. We treat every cell of this dataset the way that fact deserves.

The dual-source rule

Every threshold, category, ratio, fee and training cell was read in two places: the law itself (statute or administrative code) and the licensing agency's own published guidance. Where the two agree, the cell ships. Where they disagree — it happens; Illinois handouts have read related care more broadly than the Child Care Act does — the cell ships the narrower reading, the one that keeps you legal under both, and the state page says a divergence exists.

The dated stamp

Every state file carries its checking date — October 2026 — printed on the page and in every verdict. Rules move: two states (Illinois and Kansas) moved their entire licensing agency on July 1, 2026. A number without a date is a rumor; ours carry dates, and the dataset is delta-checked on a quarterly calendar, deep states first.

What the checker refuses to do

It never prints “you're legal, go.” Below-the-line verdicts print the deciding facts and hold only while those facts hold.
On facts a state reads two ways — an own-children election, a county that licenses where its neighbor registers — the verdict is at the line, and it names the exact question for your licensing office instead of guessing.
County and zoning layers are printed as required local checks, never silently defaulted. Florida's register-or-license fork is decided by your county; the site says so on Florida's page, in the verdict, and in the kit.

The known-answer suite

Before any version of this site is sealed, the engine must pass hand-computed boundary cases taken from the rule texts themselves — California's family-count trigger (your two plus one family's three is exempt; a second family is not), Texas's no-tier rule (three unrelated children on a regular schedule is a listed home; the fourth is registered), Illinois counting its own under-12s into the line, Florida's two-family definition, Pennsylvania's fourth unrelated child. Software that cannot pass the boundaries does not ship.