I frequently read and hear anecdotes about non-custodial parents (usually fathers) being ordered to pay outrageously high child support – amounts that are impossible for anyone with an ordinary income to afford. No doubt some of these anecdotes are exaggerated, but I’m convinced that some are not. Unaffordable child support payments don’t benefit anyone – not even the children – and should not be imposed. Furthermore, some measures to help non-custodial parents pay child support – such as a tax deduction of some sort – would be reasonable.
However, some men’s rights activists (MRAs) use rhetoric which suggests that child support payments are often or typically outrageously high, or that child support has made single motherhood a profitable situation for women. Neither claim is true.
According to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report (pdf link), the median child support payment in the U.S. is $280 a month. The average child support payment is a little higher – $350 a month. That’s a noticeable amount – similar in scope to payments on a new car – but it’s hardly the crushing, slavery-like burden some MRAs seem to describe child support as.
Although the Census Bureau report doesn’t provide detailed income breakdowns, what information it has indicates that child support amounts are sensitive to income. For instance, among fathers who are below the poverty line, the median child support payment is $125 a month, compared to a median of $300 a month for those above the poverty line.
So despite the terrible anecdotes that we hear (and if you think about it, it’s those who are mistreated by the system who are going to talk about their experiences the most often), the evidence shows that typical child support payments are not ridiculously high. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about those outliers who are being ordered to pay unaffordable amounts of child support; however, I think the weight of the evidence suggests that while the system may need some tweaking, on the whole it’s not broken.
* * *
So the typical child support payment is $280 a month – put another way, half of custodial parents who receive child support get $280 a month or less. How does that compare to the costs of raising a child?
Again, the federal government compiles some good statistics on this (pdf link). For a single parent with an income of about $17,500, raising a single child for 17 years will cost about $10,125 a year, or $840 a month.
Of course, a single parent who earns $17,500 a year is pretty poor. What about single parents who aren’t poor? For better-off single parents – those earning an average of $65,000 a year – raising a single child for 17 years will cost almost $21,600 a year, or a little over $1,800 a month.
All told, the typical child support payment in the USA covers much less than half the expense of raising a child. Custodial parents – usually mothers – are taking on not only the majority of the work involved in childrearing, and the majority of the opportunity costs – they’re taking on the majority of the cash expenses, as well.
Therefore, I’d support a two-tiered reform to child support. Child support payments should be made more sensitive to individual situations, so that noncustodial parents are not saddled with irrational and impossible-to-pay child support orders, as has happened in some outlier cases. At the same time, typical child support payments are simply too low, compared to the cost of raising a child; therefore, most non-custodial parents should have their child support obligations increased. (This will also have the side benefit of reducing unwed motherhood.)
NOTE FOR COMMENTS: Please don’t post about how you have an income of $500 a month and the judge ordered you to pay $2000 a month in child support to your ungrateful lazy ex-spouse who spends all the child support money on dresses she can wear to the track and she earns more than you do anyway and the judge won’t even reply to your motions. Unless I know both you and your ex-spouse, and can verify for myself that she’d tell me the same version of events that you’re telling me, I don’t think anecdotal evidence of that sort is more useful than the federal data.
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All told, the typical child support payment in the USA covers much less than half the expense of raising a child. Custodial parents – usually mothers – are taking on not only the majority of the work involved in childrearing, and the majority of the opportunity costs – they’re taking on the majority of the cash expenses, as well.
Indiana courts figure that if mothers want to retain primary custody of their children over the fathers, they are also agreeing to hold up the majority of expenses as well. There is no standard for a 50/50 financial agreement that I’m aware of, and frankly, I’m not sure I want one.
BTW, comment above assumes there was a custody suit.
$280 a month…gee, I dunno. Here in New York City, I am paying $881.25 per month, and I’ve been doing so for seven years. This is for two children, and it was calculated on the basis of a $48,000/year salary. This level of child support is equivalent to rent; it’s expensive. Still, there doesn’t seem to be much of an alternative.
That’s $440.63 per child, based on a salary that’s well above the poverty line. You’re only paying $90.63 above average, or $110.63 above median. Are your kids also living in one of the most expensive areas on the planet?
$280 a month sounds awfully low to me. But I only know the actual numbers for two child support arrangements, where both of the noncustodial parents were small business owners. In one case, the original child support settlement was something like $6000/month for three children, based on the value of the business (it has been since reduced to $2400/month – something about liquidity). In the other case, the business failed due to extensive malicious property damage by an employee, so the child support payment is $2000/month for four kids, based on some kind of insurance payout. Maybe the math is different when the noncustodial parent works for somebody else?
I was single-father to my four children for twelve years – no girlfriend, live-in, housemouse or ‘companion’, and never recieved a dime of support. I have about as much use for ‘Men’s Rights Groups (MRGs)’ as I do for those who bitch about them. I know first hand the answer a single-father recieves should he ask the state for help (you’re a white boy, get a job), know how it feels to be rejected by a student cooperative day-care (eewww, you’re a man) sponsored by the college ‘Changing Directions’ program (there’s no bigger directional change than from logger to single-father college student), know the anger and disgust of being rejected participation in said ‘women only’ program. I’m not a big proponant of change here on my campus, I’ve been here a while, but I smiled broadly when that one went rightfully-so down the toilet. I know that the adject poverty of single-parenthood is blind to gender.
As a caveat, this is an equal opportunity rant – I’m as chapped with the MRGs as I am with those hold that this is a problem that somehow only impacts women.
Tao
That was a very good post. I think for the most part the amount of child support is fair. My partner pays $600 dollars a month for his son, which would not be affordable for him is he was single, but the bigger issue for him was what happened when he lost his job. He had no idea that he could go in and adjust this and ended up owing thousands of dollars and had no job to pay for any of it.
I think the bigger problem is trying to navigate the court system on the part of the custodial and noncustodial parents. In his case the courts have been useless…his child’s mother has moved twice in the last year without providing a phone number or an address, and the court keeps telling her attorney to give us the number and of course he hasn’t. Unfortunately, we don’t have the $20,000 dollars we would need to fight this. Last year alone we spent $5-10,000 and have nothing to show for it. That also made paying child support more difficult. Not knowing where your child is is and having a custodial parent who makes a strong effort to block the relationship is crushing for any non-custodial parent, and having to pay child support seems to just add insult to injury. There is no custody enforcement unit. I also feel like the child support system is a twisted form a patriachy, reinforcing the notion that men (who are the majority of noncustodial parents) can make thier best contributions monetarily. The court could really care less about a child having an emotional connection with the noncustodial parent.
On the other hand, the custodial parent is burdened with providing all of the care and doing so without much financial assistance, and often there are no child support orders in place. I think there are also a significant number of noncustodial parents who could care less if they ever have a relationship with the children, which is something that the custodial parent then has to try to explain to the child.
Summary: most payments are reasonable, the system doesn’t work for either custodial or noncustodial parents.
$300 per month seems awfully low–my mother was getting that much per kid in the 1970s! And we were not well off by any standard, sometimes the power was turned off or there was no food in the house, even though she was working full time in addition to getting the child support.
The system doesn’t work, I will agree to that whole heartedly. When you talk about median and mean child support, did it include those who waived support? The numbers just seem unreasonably low to me. I was told by a close friend that Texas, for instance, has a 1000 dollar per month on the first child flat minimum.
I personally pay 750$ a month (one child) which would seem reasonable at my salary except that I have been sued several times to get there. None of the suits raised the support by the way, but I was still stuck with legal fees. Not because I failed to pay or because I am unwilling, but because I live outside of the continental US and my x’s attorney saw the disadvantage for me. My child is living in a trailor in one of the lowest cost of living areas I know (when we lived there together we had a 3 bedroom house for 350 a month).
I am not handicapped by the payment and am not complaining that it is too high. I am concerned with the way support money is handled by the custodial parent. Reading the post it gives the cost of raising a child per year. Does that include medical/dental coverage which in many cases the non-custodial parent is responsible for but doesn’t count against support? If i am not mistaken it figures in things like rent (1/2 in a 2 person family), utility increases, percentage of car or transportion costs, so on and so forth. We are not talking about a kid eating and wearing 10k dollars a year. I am not saying this to minimalize it, just bringing it into perspective.
I am also responsible for the costs of seeing my daughter. As I mentioned I live outside of CONUS right now and my x has decided my daughter should not fly. The little time I get to see her becomes quite expensive. Before this is thrown at me, yes I chose to move with my job to keep it and for the financial boost, but it is that same boost that the child support is set on. Unfortunately I am still answerable to a state I do not live in and she chose to move to after the seperation.
As for unreasonably high support costs, it is much to cookie cutter right now. Support is often awarded based on the non custodial parents earning ability, not the actual income. Unemployed, injured or incarcerated individuals are still responsible for full payment in a lot of situations. Unemployment should not result in incarceration. There is no accountablity for custodial parents, meaning they can contribute financially, or not, to the childs needs with no fear of retribution and no recourse for the non custodial parent outside of a second custody battle. I know child raising is not strictly financial but many non custodial parents would be just as willing as their partners to take the children A lot of those would do it without asking for support.
I think there has to be a closer case by case analysis. If a parent can not pay then there should be a reasonable way to work it out. Once you criminalize them, what is their incentive to pay at all?
Child support is generally done by *guideline* not by a hard and fast rule. When I was divorces in 1992, in MA the guidelines allowed this:
The custodial parent got a set aside of IIRC 10,000, and a small portion of child care expenses. Whichever parent paid the medical insurance got a set aside. When my ex provided it, he was allowed the entire cost. When I paid it, I was allowed 1/3. The family services officer said the difference is that as a man, my ex wouldnt have paid for any medical insurance for himself, but as a woman I would have to pay anyway for myself (cause we’re so much unhealthier due to our “bits”, apparently”. After the set asides, the formula, with some bogus numbers tossed in to make the math simple, was as follows
For one child, they figured 25% of my ex’s income. They added his gross income after set asides to mine after set asides. His 25% was reduced by whatever percentage of the total of our two incomes mine represented.
So let’s say his income was 100,000 after set asides, and mine was 50,000. My income represented one third of the total, so his child care assessment of 25,000 was reduced by one third, bringing it to $16750.
For the record, my ex never paid child support. My son is now 18, and in 14 years, I received less than $4,000 in total. He saw his son ever other weekend until we moved this past October, but never contributed either financially or emotionally or in any other way to my son’s raising. I spent several years chasing him in and out of court, until I finally realized that the amount of time and energy, not to mention legal fees (though he was in contempt I was only able to recover half my legal fees, which were added to the end of his child support arrears and so was also never recovered) that I was expended in chasing this deadbeat would be better spent on my own career. So that’s what I did, and managed to support my son by myself.
For the guy on this thread or the other one who moaned that as a single guy he got stuck living in a one bedroom apt for several years, I spent four years living in a one bedroom basement apt. My son had the bedroom. I slept on the couch, not on weekends, but every single night.
Furthermore, some measures to help non-custodial parents pay child support – such as a tax deduction of some sort – would be reasonable.
No.
There are already tax deductions for children – the dependency exemption and the child tax credit. (Well, in technical tax lingo those aren’t actually deductions, but…) Currently, the dependency exemption can be taken by whichever parent the couple agrees to, and this is usually done in the support agreement. If they have a half decent attorney, they will give it to the person who makes the most – usually the father – since that person is in a higher tax bracket and gets more for the deduction, and then they split the value by giving part of the value of the exemption to the lower income parent in cash. Providing an extra child support deduction only for non-custodial parents who pay child support is unfair to couples who raise there child together and still have to pay to support the child.
This is the California Statue, which I believe is based on a Uniform act.
Applying the formula to a hypothetical situation, where the High Earner has a monthly disposible income (ordinary minus taxes, union dues, healthcare costs, other support payments) of $4000 and the other one earns $2000, and the High Earner is responsible for the child one day per week (15% of the time), the calculation would be,
CS= (1.15 x .25) (4000 – 15% 6000) = $891.
Two children: 891×1.6= $1,425.60
Also, maybe some of these horrible stories are based upon spousal support in addition to child support?
All told, the typical child support payment in the USA covers much less than half the expense of raising a child. Custodial parents – usually mothers – are taking on not only the majority of the work involved in childrearing, and the majority of the opportunity costs – they’re taking on the majority of the cash expenses, as well.
Nicely done sir. You’ve just empirically dismantled one of the key underlying assumptions MRA’s rely on.
I can’t be certain because I don’t know the laws in all 50 states, but my understanding and experience is that the horror stories come from states which typically don’t have spousal support. I paid $0.00 in spousal support once the divorce was over.
I live in a so-called “guideline state”, meaning the support I pay is fixed at 20% of my net-after-taxes income, plus my child’s medical insurance, plus life insurance to cover child support should (G-d forbid) I die, plus some other odds and ends. I’m not going to say how much I pay each month in support because someone could then figure out how much I make. But I will say that I pay significantly more — over twice — than what California would require I pay given my circumstances.
In my case, and the case of many involved, non-custodial parents in these “guidelines” states, what makes it a “horror story” is that I have 40/60 custody. Meaning, 40% of the time the child is with me, 60% of the time the child is with my X. So, on top of paying 20% of my net-after-taxes income as support and all that other stuff, I have almost the exact same household expenses (because “food” is a small part of the total, per the articles Amp cited) as my X and I’m not getting any support to do that.
Fortunately, “guidelines” states are in the minority, and non-custodial parents in all states who have close to 50/50 custody are rare as well.
(Look here)
So, the “horror stories” FRAs talk about really are rare events. The majority of support orders aren’t these fixed guidelines and the majority of the orders that are fixed guidelines aren’t joint legal and physical custody (what I have) with the non-custodial parent actually exercising custody.
The far more common scenario occurs in a state where support awards are woefully inadequate and the custodial parent has sole legal and physical custody. In those cases it’s a “horror story” for the custodial parent. The Father’s Rights crowd doesn’t want to talk about the typical case. They also don’t want to talk about how almost half of all fathers cease having contact with their children after divorce.
Based on my conversations with involved (those of us who have “standard” custody orders and who take advantage of them), non-custodial parents,most of us seem to think the amount of support we pay is more or less fair, but it would be “fairer” if the ratio of time was taken into consideration, as is the case with the California laws. One common suggestion is to calculate the amount of support each parent would owe the other, assuming the other had custody, then multiple by the percentage of time the child is with each parent, then subtract. So, to work my situation as an example, the amount of support I’d pay would go down by about $600 a month. Interestingly enough, even that amount would be way more than what I’d owe under California’s guidelines!
So, to sum it up —
1). The arguments made by FRAs are based on “horror stories” that are extremely rare.
2). The only unfairness I can see is that the amount of time spent with each parent isn’t taken into consideration in awarding support in states such as mine (but are in many, many others), and my state is one of the highest percentage states out there.
3). Most states don’t award enough in support for the custodial parent to have any kind of reasonable standard of living and the rate of abandonment and non-compliance only makes it worse.
The current system for determining cs payments is broken. I’ve personally seen cases where the mother sued the father into ever increasing cs payments, and it eventually caused him to file bankruptcy just so he could make those payments. I’ve also seen women trying to raise kids with only $200 (for 2 children) per month in support.
This, of course, doesn’t include those women that use cs as a means to “punish” their ex-husbands (this is admittedly rare, but does happen). Or for the custodial parent that intentionally misappropriates the support given to the minor child. My friend saved all her child support for a year and used those proceeds to fund her breast augmentation surgery.
This of course, does not speak to the many men that abandon their children with little or no support. My ex husband doesn’t pay child support, but at this point I don’t really want it either. It has been my experience that with support comes greater involvment in the rearing of the children. This man wasn’t responsible enough to be a good spouse, and even his parent’s have their doubts about is ability to properly rear children. So, I’m just as happy that he isn’t involved to a great extent. He sees the kids at his parent’s house every other weekend or so, and that is just fine with me.
Many of my friends have pushed me to sue for child support, but being the realist that I am, I know that if he wouldn’t support his spouse while married why would he support his children after divorce? He won’t work, and I’m not willing to suffer the expense and drag my kids through the court system just to be awarded payments that I will never receive.
[Duplicate comment deleted by moderator.]
Mendy writes:
Because if you can get the award on the books there might be a day when you can collect it, with interest. But if you don’t, or if you leave the award at some pathetically low amount, you can’t.
Child support arrearages don’t magically disappear when the last kid turns 18 or 21 years old. And those men who “won’t” work quite often are working and there are ways to prove not only that they are working, but also to estimate how much they are earning. Admittedly that takes money to prove, but without an arrearage to collect you can’t do anything to collect it.
So, go sue for support, the judge will impute some amount of income, and the arrearages will start to accumulate. Then, when the child needs money for college, a first house, or a baby, see if you can’t go after the bastard.
Just my anecdotal 2 cents – I pay 1,320 a month for two kids in Michigan, with an annual gross income of 41,000. I think it’s a little high – I have to work a second job to get by in a small two bedroom apartment, but them’s the breaks. I see my kids regularly and they have a bedroom when they’re with me, so it feels more like a second home. However, I feel the system seems almost arbitrary. I work in the payroll field and there are people who make three times as much as I and pay less. I know the formula takes many things into account but at the end of the day it doesn’t work for a lot of people.
FCH,
When I said he didn’t work, I meant that in the seven years we were married he worked six, and he’s only worked six months in the six years that we’ve been divorced. He’s lived off his parents, then he lived off me, and now he lives off whatever woman is dumb enough to do it until she wises up.
My husband has pushed me to do what you advocate, and to be honest it isn’t worth it. The thousands I’d have to spend in attorney’s fees and court costs is much better spent in the kid’s college investment accounts. I’m lucky that I’m in a better financial position now than I was during my first marriage, but that is due mostly to my clawing my way up the economic ladder.
I’ll concur with the commenters above who point to the problems in the way the system is administered being a far greater problem than the level of the awards being excessive.
For instance, there is the right of the court to impute income. If a couple was still together and one partner wanted to shift gears career-wise, go back to school, work half-time so that they could write a book, or go independent and start a business, then the family, including the children, would have suffered a fall in the standard of living.
With a support order based on imputed income, the court won’t recognize the decrease in income and the expectation is that the children shouldn’t have to sacrifice as they would have if they were still together in a family. Now of course, I understand that imputation arose to combat those who purposely hid their income or, in spite, choose not to work simply to avoid payment, but mission creep has set in and courts often extend the concept beyond original intent.
Then of course, there is the contentious issue of paternal fraud and a man being forced to pay support for a child he didn’t father. In some states, a simple declaration, under oath but without penalty for perjury, from a mother is sufficient to entrap a man in the child support enforcement regime. That however, is a whole other topic.
errr…that should read “In the seven years we were married he only worked six months.”
I hate when my brain moves faster than my fingers. ;)
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I was astounded to read a news story last year that revealed that 70 per cent of non-custodial parents in Australia (where I live) pay only the minimum child support payment of $5 a fortnight. Seems to me there are many more men (usually) avoiding their responsibilities than women trying to take them to the cleaners.
This thread has not had a lot of responses, but I would be curious to know if anyone found my circumstances in my post a few above to be out of the ordinary, or unfair, or completely just. I just decided to find out what percentage of my gross goes to child support, and it’s 38.7 percent. Is this common? I would really appreciate some honest responses.
and the court keeps telling her attorney to give us the number and of course he hasn’t
File a complaint with your state bar association. Your lawyer should also be asking the court to hold her attorney in contempt.
Those are some pretty high numbers the Feds are coming up with in their calculations. A little closer look and you’ll see that the cost of raising a child includes, paying all the rent, utilities, medical expenses; and much more.
Don’t call it “The Cost of Raising a Child.” Call it ” Cost of Raising Your Ex.”
I don’t mind sharing the cost and obligations of raising our child, but I don’t feel obligated to support my ex. She can get a job. Many of the complaints I hear from Dads revolves around feeling used in this respect. The child support isn’t used for what it is supposed to be.
I’m sure a more realistic analysis of the actual costs incurred, which doesn’t include the lion’s share of the living expenses, could be calculated and current support guidelines start looking a little better.
Either that, or call it what it is.. Spousal Support, or Alimony..
So you’re saying that your ex lives in an apartment, but makes your children sleep on the street? Geez, I guess it is unfair that rent counts as part of the expense of raising children.
Especially since everyone knows that you can raise two kids in the same size apartment that one adult alone can live it; it’s not like children take up any space.
Hahaha, Amp, my kids have more clothes than my husband and I put together, plus they’ve got more space in their room than we do.
—
My mother had to pay alimony to my father for a year because she was making more than he – nevermind that she had put him through college. She paid it, until the case was brought back to court when he started working at his new job.
My mother was awarded $250 a month in child support. It was four years or so before he actually paid anything, and he was threatened with garnished wages before he’d actually DO it.
My exhusband and I have one child together. Before we came to a compromise, he was trying to get 100% custody and sue me for child support. If we had fought it, I would have wound up paying child support to him, nevermind that he’s both military (and has his expenses covered) and makes more than my husband and I do.
We worked it out eventually, because we’re adults, and we love our daughter, so the fact that he and I don’t love each other doesn’t matter. In the two years since then, we’ve gotten along better than we did when we were married.
MRAs can kiss my big white fanny. Child support cases fuck EVERYONE over – children the worst. Where’s the MRAs’ concern for them?
Sorry, I didn’t mean to rant.
Ed, I really doubt Texas has a $1000 per month minimum. Massachusetts, where I practice family law, has an $80 per month minimum, for example. And it now has a $20,000 per year set-aside for the custodial parent before that parent’s income begins to offset child support.
In all of my cases my clients are extremely low-income or indigent, and while the opposing parties are invariably better off, the full support obligation has never, in any of my cases, been more than $200 per week–and usually it’s far less. MA, like most states, bases child support on the income of the noncustodial parent and has an extremely strong presumption in favor of the use of its child support guidelines, up until the point where the noncustodial parent is making some large amount of money, after which the guidelines don’t apply but a judge isn’t supposed to set child support for anything less than the max guidelines amount. The only way to get out of the guidelines as a typical matter is to impute income to the noncustodial parent (so, if he has a demonstratedly high earning capacity, you could set child support based on what he *could* be making–this is a necessary provision since, though I found it hard to believe when I started in this practice area, a surprising number of men actually quit their jobs when the other parent starts enforcing child support obligations). Anyway, the imputed income provisions apply neutrally–that is, you can impute income to the custodial parent if he/she is demonstrably deliberately underemployed.
Hey I’m cool with paying half the additional expense incurred from having custody of the child(ren). My ex is an equal who can pay her own way. She can pay her rent just like I can and do. If she has to change her living arrangements, I think it would be fair to pay half of whatever additional expenses are required adjusted for standard of living.
That Government report calculated the cost by using total living expenses not just the cost of raising the kids as you described. That to me puts in question whether child support levels are where they should be.
Are you saying that paying all her living expenses because she has your children is fair? Or that it is somehow deserved or justified? How so?
Of course there are ways to do this honestly. In addition to community property laws, Texas has temporary spousal support. So women have a buffer. But again it is temporary.
About Texas though: 25% of gross income for one child is law with a sliding scale for more children. But judges have descretion to raise it (but not lower it). Most of the minimums I have heard about, because of unemployment issues, was $125.
Thistle, the 1000$ amount is second hand knowledge, though I have no idea why he would lie about it or perhaps his x did to get that settlement?? As for men quitting there jobs, of course they do. I never claimed men were immune to being corrupt and hateful. After divorce/breakups people try to hurt each other with whatever weapons they have. That is why we have to try and make the system less of a wieldable weapon. Men who get layed off or are unemployed for legitimate reasons should not suffer because there are hateful idots out there. Just as all women/custodial parents, should not be denied support because there are parents out there who dropped off the kids on grandma and are smoking and drinking their support checks.
First of all, it’s not true that the entire cost of housing is included in the cost of raising children. The report I linked to assumed that each resident pays an equal share of the rent; so if rent is $800 in a one-child household, then the child’s housing is assumed to cost $400. This is called the “per capita” method.
What you’re suggesting, instead, is the “marginal cost method.” The government folks decided not to use this method because they thought it was too difficult to come up with a meaningful control group, plus there were other statistical difficulties (there’s a two-page appendix discussing why they didn’t use the marginal cost method); they decided that the per capita method was probably more accurate.
Housing children is 28%-44% cheaper calculated using the marginal cost method instead of the per capita method. Using the 44% number, what kind of difference is made?
For a single parent with an income of about $17,500, raising a single child for 17 years will cost about $8,400 a year, or $700 a month. For better-off single parents – those earning an average of $65,000 a year – raising a single child for 17 years will cost about $19,020 a year, or a little over $1,585 a month.
That makes a difference, sure, but not a big enough difference to change my conclusions.
(Miscellanious expenses are lower, and transportation expenses are higher, calculated according to the marginal cost method; I didn’t adjust for this, because there’s only so much time I’m willing to spend on this, and the net effect would be pretty minor whichever direction it went in).
You should also consider that the higher mortgages that come with buying a house suitable for kids are not counted at all in the government calculations; the government considers mortgages to be savings, not expenses. I can see the logic in that, but that doesn’t change the fact that my mortgage is in effect my single largest monthly expense.
Also not mentioned is the likelihood that many NCP’s that gripe about the level of their payments are in arrears.
My son’s father has been quitting jobs and avoiding paying at all costs, so that his arrears have accumulated to 48,000. If he were to pay me back per standard court order (24 months) and keep current, he would be paying me 2,750 monthly for the next two years. I hardly expect that. I would be satisfied with a longer payback period.
However, if I were to compile those payments and get ‘breast augmentation surgery’ that would be my choice. For years I have borrowed, accumulated debt and interest in order to maintain my son. I have forsaken many professional opportunities. I have not been able to save for my future as have my colleagues. In short, I have been financially crippled for the remainder of my life.
Add the fact that nonpaying NCP’s are not charged late fees for non or late payment and that CP’s or taxpayers are burdened with payment of legal and collection fees, you can see where the gripe loses weight. If I pay late my garbage,utility, mortgage, phone,TV, credit card, etc, etc etc I am pummeled with late fees and interest.
I , too, spent years of anxiety and my own money trying to pursue support enforcement. I decided to turn it over to the state. Even if we don’t see it now when we need it, I have the resolve I have done the right thing. Someday, my son’s father will receive something of value that will automatically have a lien. I have protected the interests of my childs’ future, even if mine aren’t.
By the way, lots of people lose jobs and get laid off. It even happens to single parents who receive no child support! Guess what we do? We get another job! Anything! As a parent it is our (BOTH) responsibility to feed, clothe and provide for the child.
MRA’s complain about CP’s expecting child support as if we were grabbing for some form of entitlement for ourselves. They think we should have more PERSONAL RESPONSIBILTY. Paying child support IS personal responsibility. It is neither the job of the government nor of the other parent to take care of your child.
Imputing income has it’s place. As a professional with a graduate degree, I expect my child to live a life commeasurate with the expectations I set for our lives when I embarked upon that hard earned task. My NCP is equally educated, but underemployed. I hardly think it equitable that my son should suffer his father’s sloth because he feels he should pay less.
Ed writes:
The Texas guidelines are 20% of net after taxes and mandatory work related expenses. No adjustment is in the code for time share and the assets of a remarried-to spouse cannot be considered in computing support.
(Just so people don’t think that someone is actually getting 25% of anyone elses gross income for a single child.)
(Because we’re getting a few “No, it really IS insanely high!” responses …)
Lemonheads writes:
I went to a website which provides “support” calculators. I entered all your information, and the minimum required “net” income for you X. The number the calculator (which seems to be fairly accurate, except for how my home state handles people making more than a certain gross income …) gave was $52 per week, or about $223 per month ($52 * 4.3 weeks per month).
Assuming you aren’t lying to us (hey, I’ve known men who accepted all kinds of whacked support orders because they were dumb …) request a reduction back to guidelines. It’s not in your children’s best interests for you to be impoverished.
Now, it’s also possible that you’re paying alimony in with that child support, in which case there’s a difference. When I say I pay $1,300 / month for one child (it’s been voluntarily increased because I love the munchkin and kids be expensive to raise …), I mean I pay $1,300 per month for child support. I pay a mess more for insurance, etc., but that $1,300 is just child support.
Try this on for size:
In 1991, my girlfriend magically became pregnant when our 5-year relationship was threatened (due to her cheating habits). When our son was born in 1992, the Catholic-run hospital would not list me as his father, since we had never married. This later proved to be a disaster…
Tha same year our son was born, my girlfriend secretly filed a fraudulent claim for child support, having the payments sent to her mother’s address, even though we lived together. The Welfare division did not check her story about my “absence”, and just gave her money. This happened in Alaska, where the governing department (Dept. of Revenue) had my contact information on file for the Permanent Fund Dividend payments until 1996. The Welfare division never made any attempt to contact me, or garnish these oil revenue checks which are issued to every Alaska resident. I had no idea my girlfriend was getting checks from the state, and I later found out it was to support her new secret cocaine habit.
In late 1995, she took our child and disappeared without a trace. Since I was not the legal father, I had no choice but try to locate her to have her served with a paternity petition, to prove I am the father, and get some kind of visitation. I tried to find out from the Welfare division if she was getting any state assistance, but they would not give me that information. However, they still did not bother to inform me of any payments being made to her in my “absence”.
In 1998, I took a job offer in Ohio, while continuing to pay private detectives in Alaska to find my son.
Then, in January of 2000, I was contacted by the Children’s Services division in Alaska. They informed me that my son’s mother was in custody for giving birth to a child while under the influence of cocaine. My son was being temporarily placed in the custody of his grandmother (her mom, and just as much of a scam artist), and I hopped on a flight to Alaska to see him that very day. But had to return while hearings proceeded, leaving my son with his grandma.
After some minor legal formalities, I was awarded full custody of our son on Father’s Day of 2000, and he came to live with me in Ohio. His mother was ordered to undergo treatment and drug screening, which she failed for 3 years – Alaska gave up and dropped the case.
But during the ensuing mess, in 2003, the Alaska Child Support division sent me a bill for over $9k for back child support from the early 90’s. Even though I have full custody of the child it was meant for in the first place! I wrote letters to every possible government agency and official, which only prompted threats of full payment from the CS division. This was/is in the amount of $700 a month, but they were not able to garnish my wages for some reason. I was a contractor at the time. Then in 2005 when I became officially employed, the garnishments began, and still continue.
Alaska sent my paperwork to Ohio to gain the assistance of local government in the case. The very same paperwork I requested since the 2003 harrassment began, and Alaska would never supply. This is how I read about the initial claim in 1992 – 11 years later! I tried to report this as fraud, since I have proof that we did live together during the times she claimed I was absent. But since I didn’t file a fraud claim within their 2-year window, I have no leg to stand on; even with concrete proof!
To top it off, Ohio assumed I was some deadbeat, and sent me a bill for over $26k! Claiming that I owe child support for 2003 to the present. When I talked to the ‘genius’ case worker in Ohio, and proved my son has been in my full custody since 2000, they said they would fix it. I jokingly said “I guess you can just send that bill to his mom, if you can find her” – I was then told that she would only be responsible for the minimum $50 per month! This from a woman that has not sent her own son so much as a birthday card since he moved here!
It terrifies me to know this kind of backward thinking and lack of attention is the governing power over the welfare of children!
For the person who stated that rent was 800USD and therefore, for her and one child, the child’s cost is 400USD, I believe you actually need to take into account that you cannot rent an apartment for yourself for 1/2 the cost of renting an apartment for two people. Normally a one bedroom would be 600USD and a two bedroom possibly 800USD, not double the cost.
For those who complain that ex husband only worked for 6mos out of a 7 year relationship, why did you have children when you knew this is how he was? If you were still married to him, the children would not be entitled to anything more than what they received while you were married. Isn’t that the purpose of child support? So that the children’s standard of living is maintained even after a divorce?
For those who claim that 20pct of Net Resources is not a high amount, I would love to know how many of your parents actually spent that amount on each of you growing up. In intact families, parents normally save money for retirement, etc. first and whatever is left over is the household budget, not the budget for a single child. In an intact family when a couple decides to have a second child, the costs of raising the first child do not go down, but the standard of living does, as the available monies are now split raising two children, yet in divorced families, the standard of living of the first child cannot ever be lowered.
For the person who gave the advise to contact a lawyer when the ex was hiding the child from NCP I ask…why is it that the NCP has to hire a lawyer for this, but the CP gets a free service locating a missing parent?
Is it truly in the best interest of the child of the CP to hide the child from the NCP?
For the professional that does not believe her son should suffer because father is underemployed, why do you feel that your child is ONLY entitled to the “good” of the NCP, but children in intact marriages are entitled to both the ups and downs of parents, including changes in income?
About the 20pct of Texas child support, that is only the BASIC child support. There are some out there that pay much more because the courts can and many times do deviate from the standard 20pct to pay CP for extras, as long as it is for the benefit of the child…which means, more money for child and CP. And of course, only to the benefit of the child of divorced parents, never worrying about children of intact families.
Why is it that intact families are not required by law to provide health care for their children, but children of divorce are entitled by law to receive health care?
Why is it that intact families are never required to pay college tuition for their children, but children of divorce are entitled in many states to receive monies for college tuition from NCP?
Why is it that it is assumed that if a parent makes a higher income a child is automatically entitled to more? For years my father laughed about those same government figures you discuss about the cost of raising a child. He made very decent money and I do remember his co-worker’s kids having the nice clothes, the private schools, etc…and us having the no brand clothes, and going to public schools so that my dad could have a bigger share of money to save for his retirement. I was not entitled to anything in an intact family.
Why is it that a child of divorced parents has the OPTION to see a parent, but in intact families if you don’t get along with your parents, you just have to deal with it?
I am not for deadbeat dads. I am for EQUALITY of children. An equality of children is not what most CP and the CSE are about. They are about preferential treatment for children of divorced parents.
The USDA figures are flawed. Figure it out yourself. That single mother spends only $614.58 per month on herself. This is for her clothes, housing, groceries, automobile, health etc while spending 843.75 on the child. This may be reasonable when childcare is paid for by a single parent not often otherwise I’d think. This brings up another flaw. Taxes. The amount for child support is not taxed to the custodial parent. Even if there is childcare there is a childcare tax credit as well as subsidies. The custodial parent is head of household and gets the child exemptions. Then there is Earned Income Tax credit the custodial parent in this example qualifies for. Non-custodial parents, usally fathers also usually pay the costs of health insurance for the children, above and beyond the amount of childsupport. I could go on and on, but the point is this blog is anti-men rather then being pro-women. Myself I tend to be pro both men, women, and children too. I don’t see the benefits to being anti any.
My solution on childsupport would be a tax at birth of child that goes towards their future children. The parents would pay it for the joy of having a child.
As far as child support having an effect on unwed motherhood, perhaps enforcement does lower it. I did not read the pdf, howerver I’d expect that sexual education and access to birth control to have more effect. I would also expect that welfare reform itself has an effect upon the births of unwed children. Without taking in to consideration a number of other factors I do not see how any change in the number of unwed births can be attributed to childsupport alone. Interesting to note that the trend is number of single parent households has increased while the number of children born to unwed parents has decreased.
Since single parents are extremely likely to need to pay for childcare, I don’t see the numbers as all that unlikely.
As a man myself, I disagree.
The study did take into account many factors other than child support laws. For example, they found that access to abortion was negatively related to the rate of unwed motherhood. Perhaps surprisingly, there was no statistical relationship between welfare and the rate of single motherhood.
While one would think that to be true the amount and therefore the cost of childcare would be expected to relate to the hours they worked per week, if the children were attending public school or preschool. If father time could be and is substitued for childcare, or if an alternate care provider is available (friend, family etc). The only figure I have seen says 66% of custodial mothers work less then 40 hours per week. I am not sure how good this statistic so I hesitate to endorse it. There is also still the tax credits and subsidies to consider.
I’m not going to press this much as there are other things I prefer to spend my time doing. Suffice it to say that as a close to fifty year old woman who has been through a divorce, two marriages, raised a twenty eight year old daughter (first marriage), and currently raising a seven year old son, I see it differently. There is a place for men’s rights groups and a place for women’s rights groups, but ultimatley the thing both should be working for is rights for all people, children included. Although a mother gives birth to a child, she does not own the child, nor does the father.
I mispoke above. The 2003 CDC report says birth rates for teens continued their steady decline. The birth rate for unmarried women (15-44) increased. The Trends in Characteristics of Births by State: United States, 1990, 1995, and 2000-2002 mentions that the highest proportion of unmarried births is in the Southeast. So even with increased childsupport collections, unwed births increase.
Just as I find it difficult to believe that tougher childsupport collection lowers unwed child births, I find it difficult to believe women have a child on purpose to collect child support. The CDC Trends reports also mentions that nationwide and in all States birth rates are down for women under 30 and increased for women 30 years and over between 1990 and 2002. I’d suggest that isn’t because they want income from child support but because they want a baby, maybe they don’t feel their mate is husband material, or just don’t want to get married.
Well, reading these posting has helped me feel a little better about paying $1,600 a month in child support. It seems that many people that earn a good living are paying quite a bit of money each month. I sometimes find myself emotionally conflicted about this subject. On one hand, I deeply desire to support my children (that I travel 1,300 miles a month to see). On the other hand, the fact that I have to pay $1,600 a month, places me in a position where I can not buy a house again. This is hard to swallow given that I make $80k a year gross.
Any words of encouragement?
Michael, it’s commendable that you deeply desire to support your children, and even more commendable that you pay child support and travel to visit them. I really think it’s great that you do that. So cheers to you.
If you think the amount of child support you pay is unreasonable, then we’ll have to disagree about that. But it speaks well of you that you pay it, nonetheless.
Michael, children are a financial burden no matter what the parents’ living situation is–I’m sure I spend more than $1600 on the support of mine, and I’m not divorced. Try to think of the financial hit as the extra cost of living apart from them, and not as their support.
I believe the current system is broken. I agree with the poster that child support should go to child support only. If a mother believes she must have the custody of the children, why should the man pay the expenses for her own expenses? If this becomes necessary, then alimony should the way to do it, not through child support.
Also, the government is more than willing to put in jail if you miss child support payments, but very little help if the custodial parents violates your visitation rights. I believe this is inherently unfair.
My ex-wife had a much higher level of education when we got married. However, she refused (yes, refused) to find work. I called some friends, and she could have joined Yahoo! around 1997… But she didn’t even bother to go to an interview. Anyway, I needed to study at night and work during the day, so we would not live in poverty (considering the high living costs in San Francisco bay…). I barely had time to see my child, but I would do everything I could to be with him every possible second I could.
When we divorced, I wanted to have full custody, but I felt the system was extremely unfair to the man. Why should the care offered by the care of a mother be less than my care trying to work as hard as possible to support my family? I recognize she loves our child. I am not questioning that. However, how fair is a system that award custody to an irresponsible parent who decides she should not look for a job or take her fair share of responsibility in supporting a household?
If both parents are both decent people, then I think the child support would be only fair if awarded to the parent who is able to make a living (of course, alimony allowed for a period of time to even things out). I am pretty sure if this happened, my ex-wife would work as hard as she could to earn more and keep custody for our child.
It seemed absurd the only way for me to have child custody would be to quit my job and let my family in poverty hoping my wife would find a job and I would be staying at home. I am responsible person and I cannot risk the welfare of my child playing such games. Actually, I would not even risk the welfare of my ex-wife, since I stupidly thought she needed to be protected because she acted so irresponsible helping our finances.
Now, I probably could have full custody after she fails because of her irresponsible attitude towards life. However, the system will “even out” her failure by providing her with my money. I am not saying the money is not providing my child with shelter, heating, etc… However, why should be the one with less ability to pay the bills the one to have custody? (Of course, I am considering the case both parents are decent, loving ones).
Funny you should mention it, because that’s exactly the strategy my ex employed while we were still married. He “lost” his job and refused to get another one. In desperation, I ended up going back to work after my maternity leave figuring somebody had to keep a roof over our heads. In his case, however, it was part and parcel of his whole belief system in abuse and control. He didn’t want to do housework either, and was more intent on keeping the baby away from me than anything else, mostly as a form of emotional battering. I did divorce him, but he got custody. But the abuse still continues. Not surprising, as he has learned that there are no consequences for his behavior.
And yes, I pay child support.
Well, the system doesn’t look at “decent, loving ones”, it looks at who has the track record of caring for and about the child. Yes, of course, mistakes and abuses occur, but a court is (rightly, I think) going to look at which parent fed, bathed, dressed, disciplined, educated and entertained the child when granting custody. The goal of custody awards is not figuring out who has the money, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Sadly, yes, there are abuses and couples who had plans to share parenting responsibilities do get trapped in a “winner take all” situation some times when state laws get applied. On the subject of “per capita” versus “incremental”, I think that most child-support-paying parents know that “per capita” is just the absolute wrong way to calculate support, and I think that’s why there’s so much resistance to paying support — because if the NCP is paying for the child’s “share” at the CP’s residence, there’s not any money left (no, really) to pay for the child’s “share” at the NCP’s residence unless then NCP has money enough for three times as many children as they have. The math is pretty simple — CP pays self + 1/2 children’s “share” and recieves the other half of children’s “share” from NCP, or (self + .5 * n-children * self) and NCP pays (self + 1.5 * n-children * self). Some parts are, of course, fully realized, like “housing”. There’s no such thing as a house that one pays “one bedroom apartment” rent on when the children aren’t present and “3 or 4 bedroom house mortgage” on when they are. But the CP isn’t paying for all the food, or all the education or all the entertainment or all the clothes or all the anything else, for the most part. And the NCP has children-related expenses as well, and there’s no wealth transfer going back — the bigger car needed to carry the kids, the groceries, clothing, education, entertainment, etc.
All that said, focusing on MONEY MONEY MONEY, which is the primary bone of contention amongst certain people, misses the point. Unless the change in MONEY MONEY MONEY is going to result in an improvement in the case of the CHILD(REN), I don’t think the change is in the best interests of anyone save the person who’s going to be paying less money. Basing support payments, as some states are starting to do, on time-share AND income difference (meaning, calculate what both would owe each other with no custody, then multiple by time-share and subtract) would take into account both ability to pay as well as actual expenses.
I respect your opinion. However, I should say that I feel such criteria is extremely biased towards women. I mean, did I care less for my child because I was working very hard to provide him with roof and education? Actually, the reason I wanted to divorce is that if I did not need to support an ex-wife who was not willing to do her share to support our home, I would have enough time to be with my child and provide him with much more love and care!….
Anyway, from another biased perspective, in some Asian countries the custody is automatically given to the father, since he is the one who has the earning power. I read one study showing children in such countries are much less likely to be below poverty lines.
I pretty sure most mothers love their children and would be willing to do a lot of sacrifice to care of them. I recognize this fact, I admire such love. However, saying that a father is less caring because he needs to work outside to sustain a household is absurdly biased. If I could not bathe my child because I was in Europe in a business trip, would make me less caring? I definitively don’t think so.
My child has ADHD and he needs a lot of structure and care — which is not being provided by ex-wife, even though she bathes and feeds him. However, such aspects are extremely expensive to prove! I would need to hire experts, etc…. And in the end, judges would probably just give a slap in my ex-wife’s hands. This system is extremely extremely biased….
What I think is that if a spouse has no earning power and the other one is a loving parent, I cannot understand why the system would provide the children just to the spouse without earning power. The custody should be provided to the loving parent with earning power, and the court should allow for adjustments after the other parent is able to stand on his/her feet.
My soon-to-be ex is making over $95,000.00 salary a year and until recently, paid me nothing for the first two years of my son’s life. When my son was born, he took off, disappeared. Kaput.
Recently, he began to pay me $1,300 a month and did so for three months. He does not provide medical coverage or cover half the cost of daycare which is $606 a month in *my* state but which is much higher in other states. He feels that his payments should be lowered and that the costs of medical and daycare should be *My* problem to figure out; not his.
This past month, and without warning, he usurped the agreement we made for $1,300 and dropped it to $800. He feels that we are profiting unfairly from child support and that he is only responsible for half of my son’s very basic needs. *I* feel that my son should not have to live a spartan life if one of his parents makes an almost six-figure salary.
Also of note: I’ve run the calculations for both the state in which my ex resides and the one where I reside with my son. BOTH calculations result in his being responsible to pay me over $1,600 a month when both salaries, medical and daycare costs are factored in.
What’s fair here? I have a tendancy to allow myself to be steamrolled by this man and am as a result, very wary and suspicious and…well, defensive. I don’t want to be “taken” again by him. On the other hand, what’s reasonable? $1,600 a month really *is* a good amount of money for the area in which I live but right off the bat $600 of that goes to daycare, and a good portion of it is paying off debts that were incurred during the period of time when my Ex was paying NOTHING. I don’t have many luxuries- can’t even afford a car payment or Cable TV so the money is definately going to immediate and reasonable use.
Someone please help me out here.
My boyfriend is undergoing some legal issues with an individual that claims that this kid is his, she hasn’t given birth yet. So no biological tests have been taken.
There is a 50% chance it is his, she had sex with two men within a month; both times unprotected. She is 18 and lives with her parents who are a middle-class family. Yeah, it’s hopefully only one child she is carrying, as far as I know it is just one child. Anyway, I’m really scared for him. He only makes $18,000-ish a year and he lives on his own and has medical bills and some school loans to pay off; he barely has enough money to pay his bills.
How much do you think child support would be?
Every state in the United States has a program to help families process, pay, and collect child support payments. And each state’s child support agency can work across state the lines to ensure that payments are collected and distributed to the non-custodial parents.
http://www.child-support-laws-state-by-state.com
Well we just got socked with more to be taken out for the NCP, my SO, he is now having 1188.62 a month taken out. That leaves him with $150 weekly in his paycheck. They make about the exact same amount. So now her income has doubled and the mortgage is only $700 which gives her all of her money and $400 left over from CS……all CP’s should move to NY that seems to be where the money is at!!! Sickening, I have kids and I am supporting them and him, I love him to bits but now they have lowered the income for us to support our home, which doesn’t seem to matter much to anyone.
I feel that many men feel as if child support is helping get the mother things but it is not. If a child lives with their mother she does not calculate how much she spends on the child nor does she say this is my money. The truth of the matter all money that the mother earns is first and foremost for her child.
My child’s father was paying child support while he was in Iraq but once he returned he became bitter and stopped paying. He informed me that he was no longer active so it was nothing his commanding officer could do. He took me to court to file for sole custody in order to avoid paying child support however that did not work. Thank God for that. He was ordered to pay the child support that he owed and the judge even cut his child support for three months to one hundred dollars to help him to catch up. That all happened in January it is now august and soon to be the end of august and I have only received three hundred dollars total from him. I did file a case on him for non support after months of trying to get him to help. Now he will not see the child since he has been served his papers. Child support has nothing to do with visitation. He has not been restricted from seeing his child after all this time I would not have denied him now. It expensive to raise a child especially with daycare costs which is three twenty at the least. His child support order is only three hundred dollars so it doesn’t even cover the daycare. In a sense child support will never be fair. However, I don’t like to hear the noncustodial parent talk about childsupport as if it some previlage. No one person made a child it took two so two should support the child. I personally work hard to support my child however I feel that the father does have some obligations to the child financially.
What I find interesting is that CS is supposed to be the sole financial “well” if you will, for the child. What about how much the custodial parent (usually the mother) should contribute? My husband pays genrous child support however, the mother complains that it is not enough. Well, how much does she contribute, or is she simply supposed to give only her time? In other words, in addition to the CS, we provide for the child too in the form of clothes, food, activities, medical (if the need arises or for example when we had to take him to the pediatrician becuase the mother “gee, I didn’t see it” didn’t notice a lesion under his diaper), etc. I feel that many of these custodial parents (again, usually the mothers) feel that CS is their “salary” for being the mother! When CS was arranged (amicably back then), my husband was single (the child was not planned) but now that he’s/we’re married we hope to change the custody so that we can establish the domicile. We’d gladly have the child here full time! What frustrates us is that the CS legally does not have to be accounted for. And when CS money is spent on anything but the child, it is essentially stealing from that child.
Anne
Generally the custodial parent end up carrying the heavier economic burden anyway. For all child-support cost, actually raising the child usually costs more.
I think the original premise is wrong. It’s not a general belief among the men’s rights movement that CS is insanely high.
The understanding is that it is first and foremost insanely rigid, in that it doesn’t account for reasonable economic occurrences, and second, that it objectifies the fathers into walking sources of income far and above any parenting he may be doing.
yeah my DH pays 1188.64 a month and only brings home 150 a week. I support him financially while she rakes in the dough. We cannot do anything outside of the hosue as we can’t afford it. But she can join weight watchers, kids in gymnastics and karate. So please tell me how he isn’t the sole money bank? I don’t see how its fair for one parent to struggle and the other to be wiped out, thats insane………..
Everyone, please read the “note for comments” that’s at the bottom of the original post.
First, given that “Federal Data” is what was used to get us into the Iraq war, I’m not so sure that it DOES have more value than anecdotes.
Second, use of nothing but statistics to determine judgements in a question like this one seem, to me, to be especially effective at making the heartache and desperation of actual people more easily dismissed once they’ve been made into mere abstractions.
Third, I find it somewhat telling that you let anecdote after anecdote, probably on the order of 60-70% of the posts, go by until Gabrielle began posting her situation.
My current court order has me paying > 50% of my income prior to taxes, supplying the medical insurance, and paying half of the medical bills/co-pays. I am also required to pay any court costs and fees.
In the past, my ex didn’t hold a steady job and there were times that she lived off the child support alone. There were several circumstances where I was taken to court just to see if I was making enough to raise the monthly child support even though she was unemployed.
In the state the support was filed, they calculated the income of both parents added together, then figured out what percentage of that income each parent makes, and then used a chart to figure out EACH parents financial responsibilty for supporting the child. In my case it is not a financial gripe, I just added that in to support my case.
I feel that a couple deciding to have a child and viewing a proposed future for that child at that time shouldn’t be something that is only shared when the couple is together, but also shared well after their separation. They should both strive to make the best decisions for their child!
What happened to the “child” in child support? It seems like in the instances with major issues with child support that one or both parents are still bitter about the divorce and will stop at nothing to get the other parent to pay for it. I am not saying this is a one way fight at all.
I can’t tell you how many of my friends, that I have had the opportunity to know both parents, went through a grueling divorce where there were children involved. They spent thousands in court fees disputing little things. Wouldn’t it be in your child’s best interest to settle these disputes like adults, find a halfway medium that is suitable to both parties, and opening up a college fund for the child with that money you would lose by fighting about nothing?
Yes, there are numerous cases of dead beat mom’s/dad’s out there which is completely unexcusable. Yes, there are cases of money hungry custodial parents that hold the child at ransom. But the norm should be two adults that might have reconsidered their relationship and went their separate ways, BUT still communicate and decide together what is best for their child. I certainly don’t want the court system to decide what is best for mine! And how does my child benefit from the court fees?
My ex and I have been down a LONG and winding road. She moved my child to another state while I was at work. I was told that if I went to that state and brought my child back that it would be considered kidnapping.
I held a grudge for many years because I had limited visitation with my child due to my ex’s decision, however, I finally woke up one day. I realized that all the fighting wasn’t in my daughter’s best interest and that I was losing not only the lost time, but the present time that I could use to make a difference in my child’s life.
Recently, my ex and I have both moved into different living arrangements and finances have changed. We sat down and discussed what would be the most beneficial arrangement for our child. We are now filing for child support in the state that our child currently resides. We aren’t doing this because of a dispute. We are doing it for the convenience of the child support coming directly out of my pay instead of having to write checks bi-weekly. We have already agreed upon a fair monthly support award since the cost of living is so much less in the areas that we both moved and the decrease in support reflects this change.
I am hopeful that we have settled our differences and can communicate regarding the best interest of our child even if that means one of us has to bend a little more than the other at certain times.
We have to realize that we all made an adult decision when we decided to lay down with our partner and whether it be intentional or accidental we now have a child that is depending on our decisions. We need to make the right ones!
Although I don’t agree with every decision my ex makes regarding the upbringing of my daughter, we still manage to find a baseline that is tolerable to both of us, visitation that is fair, and a financial agreement that is in our childs best interest. To me, that is the most important issue here!
Just food for thought.
i think the best bet is for the state to stay out of it period.
well all i have to say is that i recive $160 a month and my childs father refuses to see her. nice
All I can say is I pay $1800 per month in support, plus medical insurance costs, plus 1/2 of uninsured medical expenses.
I would not object to this except (A) my ex makes a salary of over $115,000 plus stock bonus (compared to my $95,000) which is not effectively included in the support guideline calculation, (B) I have legal custodial responsibility for my 2 children ~40% of the time (NOT “visitation” — that concept no longer exists in my state), so I must maintain a similar homestead to the mother’s, but the support is not adjusted to reflect that, and (C) the laws effectively discourage me from growing my income (say by taking side consulting jobs), because any temporary income I receive from them could result in a permanent increase in my support payments, even after the temporary income is no longer available.
I agree however that the system does not need to be “overhauled”, just adjusted to allow more discretion for individual circumstances, and to encorage fathers like myself to continue to improve our financial circumstances (and hence the circumstances for our children) without risk of an unfair economic penalty.
I have been raising our daughter for 11 years, in that 11 years her father has only been around approx 2.5 years. He tried to come back at one point to get me to drop all his back child support (which I never did) He states he isn’t my welfare. I replied to him, I have had a good job for many years, I’m not asking for much but help with bills. I cover all medical needs and dental needs. I cover all educational costs, along with extra activities. Asking a father to pay $327 a month is not unreasonable considering how much I put out for not counting clothes and such. Don’t get me wrong I will keep putting out for our daughter to make sure she has everything she needs, I will keep working to support her. Her father now has gone over seas to work contractor work and states since he isn’t on US soil he doesn’t have to pay. I wrote him and told him I needed some money to help cover dental work and he said he couldn’t because he had to buy a computer. Now please tell me if I’m wrong seems like prioties are totally out of whack. I’m done ranting, but just wanted to put out, not all of us mothers are looking for a hand-out or someone to support us. Some of us do anything in our power to take care of business because we cannot count on the other party.
I am sorry but my ex moans and groans about paying $80 a week and honestly that does not even cover child care expenses. I think that if situations were reversed all these non-custodial parents who compain about child support would have a different view. Who takes off work when the child is sick (loss of income) we feed, dress and shelter our babies year round and all I hear is how money hungry I am, especially from his wife. The funny thing is that he makes about $80,000 a year and his child support amount is from 5 years ago and I have not changed it. Still bitching and complaining.
I understand payments vary state by state, but no one here is pointing out the fact that when mothers are the obligor, they are generally in default at much higher rates than fathers in the same position. Generally mothers fail to pay any support due about 47% of the time, and fathers, when the obligor about 27% of the time.
Mjaybee, do you have sources for those statistics?
I’m particularly curious to see if those figures are adjusted for income differences.
What does income differences have to do with it, Amp? Are you suggesting that courts might assign a level of child support that is unrealistic for a non-custodial parent to pay?
I’ve seen that stat around before; no idea if it’s accurate or not, but it’s sourced at the various men’s rights sites as coming from Garansky and Meyer, DHHS Technical Analysis Paper No. 42, 1991. Haven’t found it online, though, but if you can prove it wrong it’d be a major blow against the MRAs, because that stat appears on every. freaking. site. out. there. But it’s not on the DHHS site.
Here is a brief from the Census Bureau that says that in 1991, men failed to make any payments 24% of the time, compared to 37% for women.
Here is a brief on the 1995 numbers: 70% of mothers due payments actually got them, averaging $3767. For men, it was 57% and $3370 (though the difference in amounts received was not statistically significant).
Robert wrote:
Clearly some non-custodial parents (fathers and mothers) are assigned unrealisticly high child support. It also happens that realistic child support awards become unrealistic due to unemployment or other drops in income.
I think you’re implying that this is a new position for me to take. It’s not. As I said in the original post: “Child support payments should be made more sensitive to individual situations, so that noncustodial parents are not saddled with irrational and impossible-to-pay child support orders, as has happened in some outlier cases.”
Curse your vile reasonableness.
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(Not sure if the original poster had intended that block quote to be formatted differently or what ….)
First, cars don’t last 18 years, so one is going to have to purchase another car with yet another car note :)
More to the point, child support payments cover the child(ren)’s expenses. Which means that the obligor isn’t paying for … food, clothing, shelter, etc. except when the child is with them. This would be like not having to pay car payments for days you don’t drive. Children, on the other hand, require food, clothing and shelter every day of the month.
I didn’t see much other discussion about possession share. I’d like to see more comments by others about child rearing expenses and possession time share.
Good stuff, Amp. I only just found this post because of your “Top 10” link.
When I was divorced, I had no problems with my child support payments (I paid a bit more than 1,250/mo for 3 children). I thought the system (for people in our income bracket — about that $65k figure you quoted) was pretty fair. It considered both spouse’s incomes and then calculated the child support based upon those and a statutory level of need.
What I *did* have a problem with was the alimony award. Your post doesn’t address that and I’d be interested in your thoughts on alimony at some point.
You can find an article I wrote on these subjects here:
http://musingsonlifelawandgender.typepad.com/life_law_gender/2006/11/sex_equality_an.html
The problem i have with child support issues on both sides is that more often than not, one parent has the responsibility of essentially paying for most things if not everything when both parents should be contributing equally, especially when both parties can be gainfully employed.
I have a friend who makes a good living as a deigner, and his son’s mother is a nurse, which in NYC she can make well into 6 figures ( there is a shortage of nurses in NYC so depending on how much you want to work, you can pretty much write your own check).
But instead of contributing to her son’s life, she’d rather only work 2 days a week. Live with her mother so she doesn’t have to pay rent and collect her $1600 a month in child support. I think that’s really crummy, and I don’t understand why the courts would not tell her to get off her lazy butt and work like any other responsible person. this woman has the potential to make at minimum $150,000 a year. The child support payments would be like crumbs to her.
To tell you the truth, I am a woman, and things like this makes me angry because it makes us look like lazy, greedy people. When in fact there are plenty of women out here busting their butts to provide for their families… Things need to be more equal where employment is concerned and the sharing in responsibilities of raising a child.
To Kim I would ask if the father in your story would be willing and is able to take on some of the child rearing responsibilities so that the mother could work the hours necessary to earn that kind of money? The burden of properly raising children is much more than merely financial.
and things like this makes me angry because it makes us look like lazy, greedy people. When in fact there are plenty of women out here busting their butts to provide for their families
So why is the public image of women supposedly shaped by the lazy and greedy, rather than the hard workers? Did it occur to you that the people who assume custodial mothers are all slackers may not, in fact, be basing their opinion on an objective review?
I’m also not following how refusing to work at a job full-time while rearing a child, when you are able to provide for the child (hello? free rent) is “lazy” and “greedy”. Wouldn’t the truly greedy person want that $150K?
I’m sorry, Kim, but your post reads more like “I really like this guy and his baby-momma is a bitch because he has to give her money”.
I wondered if anyone else would see the hole in Kim’s argument.
I didn’t work full time while my children were growing up. I could have, and if I had we’d have a lot more money, but frankly, raising children isn’t a sort of leisure activity which you can take up and then put down like a hobby. It’s a lot of work. And that work has to get done by someone, a parent, or if not a parent, some hired person. I preferred to do it myself, and fortunately we were able to afford that.
When it is necessary, good parents work, and arrange for whatever child care is best and/or possible. That is a legitimate choice. But it is also legitimate, if possible, for a mother to choose not to maximize her income, but rather to spend that time taking care of the child herself. Anyone who thinks this makes her “lazy and greedy” has probably not done a lot of child rearing.
Like mythago, I’m wondering why Kim is taking the father’s part in this one.
My son’s father was ordered to pay 20% of his income. Mind you his reported income is $500 per month, but before I went after him he made nearly $100k per year. And btw, he did not have to pay anything for 4 years because I didn’t file due to his abusiveness while I was pregnant and of course, he never tried to see his child.
Anyway, since I filed for CS he claimed to change and seemed to, and started talking about being a good father, wanting us to be a family, etc. I bought it. Now all of a sudden when he is about to get a new job paying over $100k, is telling me that if I continue to collect through the court he will feel emasculated and seek to feel masculine elsewhere, will not want to make a family with me and it will be my fault because our child will have not family. He wants us to live with him, he keep the money in his pocket, but not get married of course. He says he will keep the cs money for “rent” (actually the mortgage on his condo) and utilities. However, there will be no legal papers drawn up because he doesn’t want the courts to dictate what he does with his money.
He also does not want me to have it because he says I’ll “waste it on frivolous things like rent.”
I need some feedback here. I feel guilty about “denying my son” but I feel that this guy is using emotional blackmail to manipulate me. I think this is unreasonable. I feel that he has gotten close to me only to manipulate me. Also, before I had our son, he was trying to get me to either have an abotion, give the baby up for adoption, give the baby to him “So you’ll have to pay me cs” or make an agreement of cs money based on what he wanted to pay.
Please advise.
Your son is better off without that father.
Ianna,
I can’t speak for Mandolin, but I think that what she meant is
“Your son is better off without that cheap immitation of a father.”
He doesn’t give a flip about you or your son. He only cares about the money that you and your son are potentially going to cost him. Children don’t need parents that only see them in terms of dollars and cents.
I’ve had a hard time processing what Kim wrote as well. Child support and child custody are unrelated in every state that I know of. I can’t think of a single state where a non-custodial parent paying child support isn’t able to have possession time with their child.
What Kim didn’t mention, that would be a good thing to know before passing judgement, is what this guy has done to have his child with him more of the time. I’m just days a year shy of 50/50 custody. It’s taken years of work to get there, but that’s where I’m at today, eleven years later. Yes, I’d love to pay less money, but the kid has two loving parents, clean clothes, splits time between two nice houses in two nice neighborhoods, is fed and watered on a regular basis, and is all-around a pretty good kid. That’s a lot more important than however many hundreds of dollars I realistically think support should be reduced.
inanna: You are not “denying your son” anything. His father is doing all the denying because he can’t have everything just how he wants it, and he’s manipulating you into thinking it’s somehow your fault.
My daughter’s father refused to be involved apart from threatening to apply for custody (you guessed it, to avoid child support). There are days when I feel really bitter that I’m doing all the work while his life isn’t affected at all, but it’s probably better this way than having him involved and pulling pathetic emotional blackmail tricks to get his own way the whole time.
No-one can make these men into decent fathers against their wills, so the only thing to do is walk away and hope we can give our children enough love to make up the deficit.
It is suppose to be 1/3 of the non custodial parents wages. It isn’t always that fact. I just wanted to add Heaven help the parent that has an ex spouse that has children with others. If one goes on welfare to help raise his/her kids then the government takes all support checks from every child. Welfare repayment is first debtor. I wish people would remember, the support, no matter the amount is for the CHILDREN.
In a small minority of cases, child support payments – as a well as alimony, which in an MRA’s context would be appropriate here – are proscribed as a punishment, borne of the belief that men who divorce must be bad. But that owes more to social conservatism than to radical feminism.
Inanna,
Seems like he using a little bit more than emotional blackmail to manipulate you. What else do you need?
Judge a man on his behavior, not the smoke he blows up your ass. He has used your insecurities to lead you into a situation where he has total control of everything and you have no choices. If you are with him out of something besides love (your son’s wellbeing for example) then don’t treat it as if it were a ‘loving’ relationship. It is an arrangement that needs clear specifications and boundries. Get EVERYTHING in writing. Sorry for you, but you aren’t even fooling yourself …it’s not about ‘love’
Been there, done that. I saw through the smoke and have the resolve soI can sleep at night. Good luck,
kathleen
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This is a great article. My ex drives a BMW and lives in a nice house. I get $370 a month for child support. This amount covers little to nothing of raising my daughter. This month I had to pay $200 for her school trip, $100 at the dentist, and $100 a week for before/after school child care. So before I have even started paying for her food and shelter the $370 is long spent. The cost of rasing a child is HUGE! HUGE! HUGE! HUGE! The bills are never ending. AND THE TRUTH IS I PAY WAY MORE THAN 50% of raising her. It’s more like 75-80%.
I am so tired of men who whine about having to pay child support. My brother and his wife divorced and he got behind 2 years in child support. My parents went on and on about how unfair the judge was to make him pay a few hundred a month to his ex. I just about wanted to clout my brother over the head. People have such a warped perception of reality. Even my parents who should know better after watching me as a single mom put myself through university and get a good career. And yet I still have to do work on the side just to get by.
$370 a month. Pffftt. It’s an embarassment to men. If thats the best you can do what use is there for you.
Regardless of male or female, I take issue with the concept of child support as we know it, which is a government, mandated dictate. My liberal credentials are solid, but taking away the right of parents to make economic decisions with respect to their child and tie support strictly to income is intrusive micromanagement. The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the difference in monthly expenditures between a single person and a single parent with one minor child is approximately $225, not incding medical or child care costs.
Even adding as much as 25% to 50% to that figure to account for a disproportionate number of people in poverty, you still wind up at less than $350 per month for one child. I grew up in extreme poverty and in 1960 in rural Pennsylvania, as a small child, five of us were living on $100 a month. No car, no telephone, no indoor plumbing, wood stove for cooking and heating. Even allowing for inflation, that figure would be around 9K annually, today.
While my obligation for support was suspended to my ex, who makes 150K plus annually, for my daughter, an arrearage consisting of non-existent child care remains which I’m battling the state on, here in Florida. My overtures toward settlement with the state have been refused and hearings continue 15 years after our divorce. I’ve paid plenty and have put more on the table, though I earn about 1/4 of what my ex does.
Bottom line – when a couple separate, everybody has to tighten their belt and priorities need to be set. Frugality and reality may need to supersede perceived “needs”. Simple living is healthier for the planet and though simple by western standards, is lavish relative to most of the world.
Finally, the state’s role should be very limited and as long as a noncustodial parent pays or offers to pay a proportional share of necessary expenses as outlined above plus a proportional amount for child care, medical or other special expenses, it should be adopted by the courts and we could cut the cost of support enforcement (nearly $300 million yearly in FL) drastically. Enforce support against those who will pay little or nothing. For the rest of us, when these awards are not justifiable by a common economic measurement, I advocate and will practice civil disobedience.
Chris wrote:
Could you provide a link to where this statistic comes from, please? (Just saying it’s from the BLS isn’t specific enough).
And do you really think not including the costs of medical and child care is justifiable?
I spend more than that for school crap. Uniforms, lunch money, stupid Lets Do A Project assigments, class trips, track meets, choir concerts, extra school supplies, class pictures, art class etc. It adds up.
And now, since she’s 13, she eats a hell of a lot more. If you ever want to see your grocery money exceed your budget, watch a teen in front of the fridge.
And then there’s the cost of gas, because I have to transport her to and from school activities. At over 3 bucks a gallon, that adds up.
School uniforms are expensive, even at the cheap stores and she’s growing and requires clothes being bought more often (there is a size cap for uniforms, you cant buy them too big..so buying clothes with room to grow into is out) and a pair of pants and 1 shirt is easily 50 bucks.
She has to have 3 belts. At 12.99 a pop for each because of the material required and the buckle.
Childcare is the second largest expense in my current budget (mortgage being the highest). If I had to pay for full time child care (at the moment we have an arrangement for part time that is working) it would be $1000/month. Even part time care is $600/month that’s a HUGE expense.
And as far as medical is concerned, well, in addition to the insurance premiums I have a $30 co-pay for every dr. visit. She’s at the doctor on average every other month. That adds up pretty fast.
Chris, you don’t say what you’re currently making. Care to divulge?
Chris said that he makes 1/4 what his ex makes (150k). So around 37.5k.
ahh, missed that. Damn headache.
I think you mean to say that he could TRY to go in and change this and end up owing attorney and court fees in addition to the thousands of dollars.
Child support laws allow income to be IMPUTED to a person based on prior demonstrated income. A lot of the courts, but not all, refuse to lower child support orders for a job loss. Their approach is to tell you to get a job or go to jail.
The problem gets compounded when the child support arrears get reported to the credit bureaus. Many companies refuse to hire people for trustworthy positions if they have bad credit and particularly if the bad credit is from failure to support their own children.
Louisiana in its infinite wisdom in 2004 made it a felony to fall behind by $5,000. So the 60 day jail term for ‘contempt of court’ for failure to pay can then morph into a multi-year felony jail term.
and since the Louisiana courts refuse to lower child support for a person sent to jail because ‘going to jail is a voluntary act’ the child support meter continues to run for the jail term.
So then another multi-year felony jail term can be brought for the arrears that accrued during the first term.
and so on and so on.
Nick, that’s appalling. But it’s so spectacularly awful that I want to see some evidence for it. (Nothing personal).
Can you please give a link to a legitimate news source (not a men’s rights website) reporting on that Louisiana law, and the actions of the Louisiana courts?
Yes there are but the non-custodial parent does not get them. The NCP can not claim ‘head-of-household’ status, they are stuck on the ‘single’ table which results in a huge increase in their tax liability.
The dependency deduction is assumed by law to go to the custodial parent. Sometimes the NCP can get it, but this is rare and assumes the endangered species, the ‘competent attorney’ is present.
A review of the federal tax laws to treat the child support paying NCP better than the deadbeat non-child support paying NCP would be a big help.
The money should stay in the family and not go to the feds.