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.
There’s also a bit of a kicker here. One of the children (the half-sister that I mentioned later grew up to simply leave her husband and two kids for another man spontaneously) my dad didn’t even know *existed* until she was 14. He found out about her when a warrant was put out for him because he had failed to pay 14 years worth of child support. Thankfully, the judge he ended up seeing this situation as logically infuriating as we did and only held him responsible for child support from that point onwards (I guess until she was 18)?
That is the kind of mother I’m talking about. The courts actually deemed someone like her fit for parenthood over my dad who, as far as I’m concerned, is one of the most devoted family-men I’ve ever known. That woman was able to get away with this for nearly 15 years sitting on her ass, and the courts did *nothing*. Meanwhile her kids (or at least the daughter I’ve mentioned, since no one knows where my half-brother is) grew up to be wholly dysfunctional.
The other mother, admittedly, didn’t seem to abuse the system, and her kids could be fine if I ever get the opportunity to meet them. At the same time, she made more than both of my parents combined annually when I was growing up (and she had re-married once or twice, but I’m not sure what any of them made/make), so it’s one of those cases where you could say “My dad had the kids, he should take responsibility!” while simultaneously observing that those two kids would have been absolutely fine without his payments to them at all. That said, I’m not too bothered by the payments he had to make to her. Were they needed? Not really. But I also never heard him say anything negative about that mother either, so the money wasn’t necessarily wasted.
Not just for my dad, but for any ex-spouse that is essentially being used by the system while the state simply fails to follow up on where the money goes. And, obviously, for the kids themselves. Honestly, the whole child support thing isn’t even a big deal in my life any more, but when I think about some of my siblings and how screwed up their situations became because their mother was able to abuse the system so easily, I get pretty irritated. Just a little investigation into their livelihood over the years would have been all it would have taken to see that she was unfit for parenthood. But nope.
I’m not saying my suggestions are guaranteed to work or solve the whole issue as that’s not my area of expertise, but, I’ll say it again: the way it is now does not work. And my perspective isn’t one from a dad that’s upset or bitter towards an ex-wife he hates; my perspective is of a kid that had to grow up under the system and saw how unfair and inconsiderate it can be.
@FtGGoM: you said that it was unfair that your dad did not have custody of his other children just because ‘he had a record’ – by which I assume you mean, a criminal record noting an offense that would make a court hesitant to allow him to have custody – and he was supporting six children over three homes. Even if we assume Awful Mom and her 14-year-old are not in the picture here, that’s what, two separate homes with five kids? Yeah, I would think that’s kind of a financial struggle for anyone making $30K a year.
If we’re going to make taxpayers foot the bill to avoid abuses of the system, then shouldn’t it be applied fairly? That is, if we’re going to audit custodial parents’ use of money, shouldn’t we also require parents paying child support to regularly open the intimate details of their finances, to make sure nobody’s getting money under the table, or crying poormouth because they blow their disposable income on video games?
Yes, the system can be very, very unfair (because it’s a system), and yes, there are still a lot of benighted places that assume custody and money are best alloted by gender. These need fixing. But you probably should not assume that the system is broken in only one direction – as several people on the other side of the fence have pointed out here.
But that happens. If there weren’t disclosure and checking requirements everyone would just put down $0 income and pay nothing. Income declarations are tried to the tax system, so it is all serious stuff.
I had to disclose everything under the sun financially; I even had to do an income statement, at the court’s request, for the fiscal year-to-date at the time of the divorce.
In theory, the requirement is exactly the same for the other person. But my ex presented no tax returns (saying she hadn’t done them yet), no statement of income other than the summary form (which she filled with outright fabrications), regular and repeated identification of income items as expense items (her dad pays her rent; she lists the rent under expenses and ignores the income line), etc. etc.
I don’t think she’s lying or cheating intentionally (well, maybe about the rent) but I know that her financial statements could have been complete bullshit, and it was extremely plain that nobody gave the slightest sliver of a shit. I am sure that similar behavior on my part would have been laughed off by the judge.
Right?
Single mom here. I have 6 kids with
my ex and he pays $97.00 a month
(for all, not per) He only has them
friday evening to Sunday evening
also, no 50/50
I make 10/hr and my support is based on 25/hr. How is that legal?
It’s called imputing income, and it’s generally done when one party is deliberately reducing their income so as to pay less in support. It can also be used in one party has a history of working under the table, not reporting income, or otherwise deceiving the court as to their income.
—Myca
Robert, “at the time of the divorce” is one thing (and, obviously, the same rules should apply to both). Ditto for changed circumstances. That’s very different than a one-way regular audit to make sure that the custodial parent is using their support money “correctly”.
If we’re going to swap stories about judges ignoring the rules, you might want to pull up a really comfortable chair.
My point was not that the rules ought to be equal but aren’t; my point was that it largely does not matter what the rules are. The courts and the related bureaucracies settle on a simple narrative, because simple narratives are manageable. They decide who the bad guy is and who the good guy is; the bad guy gets screwed and held to every jot and tittle, the good guy can blow up orphanages and the paperwork always somehow gets lost.
I have a friend whose 4 kids were taken away by CPS on a horrible bungle; although my friend had problems, her ex had problems ten times worse. But the narrative formed up early, that she was the bad one and her ex was the good one, and she’s spent the last three years fighting a war for every scrap of time with them. Finally, finally, enough third party witnesses came forward to discuss the ex’s meth habit, and his drug dealing, and a lot of stuff worse than that, and FINALLY she got them back. Now CPS calls with help and offers of programs and counseling and court orders against the ex. SHE’s the good one and he’s the bad one.
Courts and bureaucracies SUCK at determining truth. We pretend that they don’t, because we need them to not suck, and we hedge them with rules and procedures and processes to try to get to fairness. But there is not and will not be fairness. There are stories, with good guys and bad guys, and that will control human decisionmaking nearly every time.
Jeff:
It’s called calculating on “potential income” where I’m from. How can they do it? Well, because they can. You’re the mean old ex-husband trying to do the right thing, and no good deed goes unpunished.
But in the legal sense of “how,” That’s the test for potential income: voluntary or involuntarily unemployed or “underemployed”. So basically, even though you’re trying to get what work you can the law assumes you’re a deadbeat and just trying to avoid paying your child support.
@Robert, if the rules don’t matter at all, then why even bother fussing about child-support guidelines or custody division in the first place?
Also, as somebody who does work in the legal system full time, I would strongly suggest that you not generalize your personal experience to “the courts” or “the system” or “bureaucracies”. Really, most of the time bureaucrats don’t give a shit about who the bad guys or good guys are. They just want to get through their workload.
“The rules largely don’t matter” != “the rules don’t matter at all”
I do think the courts are in a bind. The purpose of the law is to provide financial support for children. If the custodial parent makes incorrect disclosures, what are they going to do? Fine them? They just aren’t in a position to do much without undermining the whole point of their existence.
Where do these figures for costs of raising a child come from? We don’t spend anywhere near those amounts – hundreds of dollars difference. And we have calculated the figures ourselves carefully in order to plan better.
I agree with Alex, our system is overwhelmed, in all states…
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news
Assets should be included in a child support payment because some wealthy fathers don’t need to work so their income level is low and the support ordered is based on that.
That makes little sense. If the assets are financially liquid (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.) or if they are relatively illiquid but are in use (farmland, factories, etc.) then they will be generating income and the high-asset non-custodial parent – not father – will be high-income as well.
If the assets are non-revenue producing, then it means that they are in the form of things like artwork, or furniture, or antiquities. Undoubtedly the enjoyment of such things is a form of income, however diffuse, but it seems exceptionally cruel to force a parent to monetize a family’s cultural heritage in order to provide a level of consumer-type spending for the child superior to what the non-custodial parent is enjoying. Whether rightly or wrongly we expect parents to continue to provide income and qualify of life comparable to what existed during the state of the union; mandating a fire sale on assets which the children themselves would one day come to own to INCREASE that level is folly.
I think the point is to avoid people working for family, with a company car, insurance, gas, apartment, and other perks, to claim they make significant less. Sadly it does happen.
Those things are plainly income, and so treated in any divorce court I can imagine. Support calculations are not based on a naively-accepted statement of pure cash intake; income is viewed quite broadly.
http://family.findlaw.com/child-support/child-support-determining-parents-income.html
It does happen that people try to lie but it is exceptionally foolish to do so; the game is not worth the candle.
How can a system that can’t even adequately reimburse rates for foster children, govern our child support system? Why is it that the DSS is the only entity that bases your gross income in determining a payment scale. When was the last time you applied for a loan or credit and they based their decision your gross income?
It’s a system that is set up for failure.
http://www.childrensrights.org/policy-projects/foster-care/hitting-the-marc-foster-care-reimbursement-rates/
“If women expect equal treatment in society, they must stop asking for infantilizing special protections.” Some women get downright angry at this statement, and others get defensive, but can women make a serious claim to the desire for equality when they refuse to let go of areas where they expect special treatment? Perhaps if women were willing to give up these concessions they would come to be true equals in every aspect of society. The first place this should take effect is in the court of family law. It is almost always assumed the mother will have custody of the children unless the father can prove she is unfit. This remnant, set up to protect the otherwise unskilled stay at home mother, perpetuates the man/provider woman/caretaker tradition and has no place in an egalitarian society. If women want equality in the workforce, they have to be willing to offer it in the family and stop jumping to take advantage of subordinating traditions that may seem initially to work in their favor. The chaos of divorce may be easier on the female, who is typically granted custody of the children, the home, and tax-free child support, but her possibilities are stifled under the weight of single parenting while the male is free to tend to his career and relationships. In effect, his ex-wife now works for him, employed as a live-in caretaker to his children, and is dependent upon him to provide. When women have equality, the court system will not make custody decisions based on gender, and the ultimate goal will always be to encourage each parent to care for the children 50% of the time. Naturally, if there is a great disparity in earning capacity the parent with the greater earning potential will pay reasonable support accordingly, but the recipient will pay the income tax on the money he or she recieves, and the system will be set up to promote the financial and emotional well being of both parents, and not to coddle the female. Equal women will realize that promoting fathers to share in 50% of the burden may reduce their child support and level of control, but it will decrease their dependence, allow them time to broaden their own horizons, and change the traditional gender roles that place women in a subordinate role within the family.
@Max
I agree that any NCP paying child support should not get taxed on his/her full income, while the CP gets the benefit of the tax write-off for the dependent child (as is the case in NY). Child support should be considered taxable income, and the reduction in NCP’s income due to support payments should reduce his/her taxable income, or permit him/her to claim a deduction. I have seen some arrangements where the parents simply split the tax deduction in alternating years (saw this in AZ, where support payment was based on the amount of time the child spent with each parent under a court-approved parenting plan, which is how it SHOULD work, IMO).
That said, I’m not sure who you are quoting when asserting that women seeking equality must stop asking for ‘infantilizing special protections.’ What are you referring to? You allude to custody, although I am not aware of any state’s custody laws that default to the assumption that the mother gets the child — most laws state that custody decisions are made per the ‘best interest of the child.’ Some men do not bother seeking custody at all, and that the courts misapply the standard is not the fault of women who have to function within the system.
Wouldn’t the system I described (which some states have) — namely, each parent is responsible for their % share of support in accordance with how much time they have the child in their care (so parents earning equal incomes spending equal time with the child would net out to no one paying support) remedy that perceived inequality?
Really, as a custodial Parent that receives Child Support I ain’t going to get rich off of it. My last check was a whopping $48. Yep I’m really going to break the bank with that. I don’t know if there is an imbalance between what men pay and what women pay, but I know “she” isn’t forced to pay much at all.
Hi,
I have been paying my child support for a few years now. about every 6 months or so(give or take) I get a check back from the state for almost the exact amount that I am paying. I have tried a few times to get a hold of my ex but I have not been able to. I can afford a lawyer at this time to see what it is up.
My ex was getting state assistance before so they were the ones that came after me for the child support as it was mandatory. From what I am assuming is that she does not pick it up or denies the Child support? The last time I spoke with her she said she did not want money from me but the state was forcing the issue. Is there a easy way I can look into this? Also if she is not on assistance anymore is there a way we can get the Child support dropped? Or do I keep paying and just wait for the state to send me checks back?
Thanks in advance
@Jake, you didnt mention what state you were in and all states have different laws. In general though, if a custodial parent has to be on state assistance, the state will require the other parent to pay child support or reimburse the state for what it paid out to the custodial parent. This protects tax payers from having to pay for childcare when there is a parent available to cover these costs, and avoids situations where one parent will just as happily take the state’s (taxpayer) money as the other parents’. If your ex is off state assistance, maybe she is refusing the support and funding the child herself, so they are no longer seeking it from you. That said, it is doubtful the court would modify to eliminate your support obligagation (e.g. by signing away your parental rights), unless your ex gets remarried and her spouse will adopt the child, b/c it is considered a benefit to the child to have 2 parents available for financial support. Also, there is a risk she’ll go back on state assistance and they will want to recoup from you the money they pay to her again if that happens.
Hope that helps.
@Jake, you should talk to a lawyer, and there are options if you can’t afford one privately. Legal Aid is always a good place to start, as they are everywhere, and can generally refer you to help if they can’t offer it. Better, check with your state or county bar association (easily located via Google); many of them have program ranging from pro bono (free) to “modest means” (sliding scale), or can set up an flat-fee short consultation with a lawyer to steer you on the right track. Good luck.
The author sites a study concluding the average child support payment in the U.S. is $280. I pay close to $1000 a month for one child. The factors taken into the State’s calculation must result in a wide range of payment amount orders. I have other children, and know that it does not cost anywhere near $1000 per month for each of them. This being said, I have no qualms about supporting my own child with an ex, but take exception to how the amount is calculated. The bottom line is I seem to have no choice, and go with the flow as opposed to facing the wraith of the court system and inducing strain with the ex which could filter down to the child. I can not help but feel there should be a better way to manage the system
According to the US census, the average male child support payer pays $454 per month whereas the average female payer pays $291. But that is money actually paid, not ordered. According to the Census, the total paid adds up to about $41.7 billion per year. According to CNN Money, the total unpaid child support is $108 billion. That’s 2.5 times as much unpaid child support than what people are actually able to actually pay in any given year.
Sources: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/children/cb12-109.html
http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/05/news/economy/unpaid-child-support/index.html
“According to the US census, the average male child support payer pays $454 per month whereas the average female payer pays $291.”
———
Something that really skews even those figures is the disparate gender handling of “imputed income”. Judges will routinely tell an unemployed guy to get a job, and may set child support at an amount consonant with his last job, but just will not do that with a woman. Especially if she is earning nothing while being supported by a new boyfriend or husband.
On top of that, many men with custody will simply not pursue child support from the non-custodial mother if she has a history of not working. All of that means that the number of non-custodial mothers paying *no* child support – and not being included at all in your figures above – is much higher than the corresponding number of men.
Varusz, do you have a source for those claims?
“Varusz, do you have a source for those claims?”
No link, just me, and I can vouch for myself as being impeccably unbiased :) There are some family law attorneys here; I’d be interested in whether they have seen the same thing. Specifically: Have they EVER (even once) seen income imputed to a woman?
In nosing around the Internet, I couldn’t find too much in the way of statistics on imputations, but here’s one (it’s apparently from a “men’s centre” in Canada, so it may not get hefty support here):
http://www.ottawamenscentre.com/roscoe/F_imputed_1.htm
The guy tried to do a larger breakdown of all the family law cases he could gather. This one just involves the specific cases where imputation was an issue (the list of cases are further down in Appendix E).
He normalized the findings so that equal numbers of men and women are considered. He then comes up with 96% men – 4% women; very few women having income imputed (for a normalized 100 cases on each side).
Frankly, those numbers do sound right.
Imputations were also broken down into “mild, moderate and severe”.
When women did have income imputed, it tilted heavily towards “mild”; men’s imputations tilted towards “severe”.
My jobless ex-wife was imputed income at the minimum wage level.
This was over my objection; I noted that she was professionally trained, with state licensing, as a cosmetologist and had worked in that position before our marriage, and I presented salary data for entry-level cosmetology workers Colorado and in California. The judge was having nothing of it; on my ex’s unsupported (and incorrect) assertion that she would need “thousands of hours” of continuing education to work in Colorado, she imputed income to her of about half the figure I was aiming at. In almost the same breath she rejected my argument that my income should be set at the average of the previous three years, and ordered that it should be set at the peak.
So in my personal experience Varusz is wrong about judges not imputing income to a woman, but right about the direction of bias in the income-estimating process – though that bias could be towards stay-at-home spouses in general and not women per se.
“My jobless ex-wife was imputed income at the minimum wage level.”
I assume by what you describe that money flowed after the divorce from you to her (alimony and/or child support). Did the imputation on her side have much effect at all on the amount of money you were forking over?
I’m just curious – if you feel it is to personal, I withdraw the question!
To be clear: I Am Not A Lawyer.
I am a paralegal, though, and I work in a family law firm.
I absolutely see income imputed to women. Way more than once. It happens slightly less often than I see it imputed to men – but only slightly. The correlation seems to be more to ability to work/history of work/lack of non-work obligations* than it does to gender … but those things all correlate with gender.
My firm is in the San Francisco Bay Area, though, where 1) I suspect that those things correlate less than they do elsewhere, and 2) the courts and culture tend to be more liberal, and thus take gender equality more seriously.
tl/dr: Varusz is wrong, at least in my experience. Things may be different elsewhere.
—Myca
*By which I mean – if the custodial parent finding full time employment would be a net financial negative thanks to child care costs, the courts seem reluctant to assign a seek work order.
“To be clear: I Am Not A Lawyer.”
So it’s pretty much even-steven between men and women. I think that Mythago (she’s a lawyer) is also going to report that, if not a greater preponderance on the side of women.
Oh well, I’ve been wrong before. Surprising, though, that so many housewives are suffering this imputation stuff.
Well, no.
Like I said, I’m in the SF Bay Area.
Probably partially because of this, the overwhelming majority of the cases I deal with involve two-income families. Additionally, in most of the cases involving housewives/househusbands/stay-at-home parents, a seek-work order and imputation of income is never sought.
Honestly, IME, imputed income is pretty rare, regardless.
—Myca
The imputation made a difference in the support order, yes; how not? It’s all a formula.
Myca sez: “Additionally, in most of the cases involving housewives/househusbands/stay-at-home parents, a seek-work order and imputation of income is never sought.”
If it is really as even as you say, then what they are doing in San Francisco is considering unemployed men to be “househusbands”. I’m not sure what the difference is between an unemployed man and a househusband, but I suspect in other parts of the country the judges don’t dally long on the distinction. That’s kind of the crux of what I am getting at: I don’t often hear of housewives (without small children in the house) being described as an unemployed woman.
Robert: I asked it if had “much effect”, not if there was any difference. If you pay a few pennies less to your wife, and it all has the appearance of gender equality, I guess everyone wins. Especially your ex-wife and the judge.
I would assume a house husband isn’t looking for work; but maintaining the house.
No, those are two different things.
Someone (male or female) who has been working for most of the marriage and is now out of work, but could theoretically work again soon is not a ‘homemaker,’ and could likely have income imputed if it seems like they’re avoiding work so as to get a free ride.
—Myca
Yes, it was a significant amount. The imputation reduced the difference in our incomes by $15,000. That differential is one of the key elements of the formula; it probably makes a difference of $100/month at minimum.
So it’s pretty much even-steven between men and women. I think that Mythago (she’s a lawyer) is also going to report that, if not a greater preponderance on the side of women.
Why did you think I would report that?
I suspect that the reason Myca isn’t seeing much imputation of income is that, at least in theory, the purpose of imputing income is to prevent people deliberately under-earning in order to game the spousal or child-support numbers, and to look at their actual ability to earn income. A homemaker who just quit her job as a Fortune 500 executive a couple of months ago likely has a much greater earning potential than one who dropped out of high school to get married and has been a full-time at-home dad for the last twenty years, even though both of them have a current income of zero and no employment.
Well, what’s the “answer”, Mythago. Is imputation pretty much even-steven, as Myca claims? Or not? Or is your evaluation going to be withheld from us?
So, wait, first you predict that I’m going to give a particular opinion, and then when I don’t, demand that confirm or deny I hold the opinion you attribute to me? Sorry, are you bored?
I guess we’ll never get to know the real answer.
Yup, going with bored. I mean, I’m flattered and whatnot, but “mythago has the One True Answer! She’s a lawyer!” is a bit silly
We’ll have to go with the consensus of the board, that of course imputation of income is applied pretty much equally across the board, that long-term unemployed people are housewives / househusbands with no gender distinction made there (odd, my spell-checker just underlined “househusbands”, but not “housewives”) etc.
All because Mythago won’t tell us the real answer.
That is one bizarre series of comments, Varusz. Are you ready to move on to something just a bit less surreal?
“That is one bizarre series of comments, Varusz. Are you ready to move on to something just a bit less surreal?”
—-
Sure, didn’t mean for it to be surreal. If you notice, it was also 1:1 with Mythago.
I came here to learn about this side, and got a little obnoxious because I flat out don’t believe Myca. I even provided a link to some statistics on it, after a request from Ampersand, a request he didn’t make with the “other side”. In any case, there are actual family law cases there that anyone can look up (maybe Westlaw or Lexis is necessary).
I’ll try to shut my mouth more. I really want to understand why people here assert what they do. There are some very intelligent people here as well, and I want to understand why they don’t “notice” certain things.
Since the moment anyone says that their experience doesn’t match your ideology, you conclude that they must be lying, why do you bother asking questions?
“Since the moment anyone says that their experience doesn’t match your ideology, you conclude that they must be lying, why do you bother asking questions?”
—–
Well, it’s the moment their experience meets my experience. And that’s why I don’t buy it (the word “lying” doesn’t have to be applied here, because Myca himself/herself may believe it). You have a fundamentally different gender situation with regard to work in marriages. If you dispute that, look up the number of men who work or are looking for work vis-a-vis women who are out of the workforce or working part-time because they have hubby to support them (around 50%). It is therefore likely that the genders will have different statistics in family court – and that jibes with my experience.
I ask questions because I still may be wrong, and I also want to find out why certain people assert certain things purely based on ideology. The joke is that I think that Myca’s ideology doesn’t match my experience. Exactly backwards.
I also know that the banning frequency on feminist websites is very high if you don’t buy into the “narrative”. Frankly, I’m trying to tread a fine line here between saying truthfully what I think and trying to avoid being banned.
Don’t worry, we never thought you did. Everyone knows that the One True Answer is only available by sacrificing a praying mantis to Ampersand.
Varusz: Yes, imputation can be unfair. It most obviously is a legal way of creating stasis: your long term earning prospects may be excellent but the court won’t make you work if you’ve been at home for the last 5 years, even if you and your spouse had always planned that you’d go back to work in 2013. And the court won’t let your spouse quit their high-earning job that your spouse despises, even if your spouse had only agreed to stick to it for five years and was always planning on pursuing a low-paying career as a King Lear puppeteer.
The latter one is the part that creates the most unfairness, resentment, and abuse. There’s no question that you can decide that you detest stockbroking and need to become a park ranger, even if it means moving you and your kids into a double-wide. There isn’t anyone who is going to force you to sell stock… unless you’re divorced, in which case you’re SOL and may end up in jail if you can’t make the high imputed-income payments.
For example, my wife was not working for a period of some years–but she is working now, and has been for some years. She was able to go back to work almost immediately, when she was ready to do so. If we divorced now, she would be expected to work. If we divorced then, she would have had less incentive to get a better job and it’s unlikely that the court would have required her to immediately go to work.
The effect of income assignment and imputation is that the not-working-while-divorced spouse gets more freedom (“I think I’ll be a professional puppeteer because I sure as hell hate the alternatives; even if I don’t make much then my stockbroker spouse will pay for it”) and the working-when-divorced spouse ends up paying for it.
There is a gender differential in the OUTCOME, insofar as more men end up in the “imputed income” or “higher payor” role. But there is a known differential in the INPUTS, because (surprise, surprise) there are more marriages where women don’t work and men do, than there are the reverse.
Because the inputs are different, we can’t look at the outcome and know whether or not there is a gender differential in the PROCESS.
I’m reporting on my experience. I’ve been very clear on what my experience covers and why my experience may (or may not) be atypical. In fact, I posted multiple possible explanations for the disparity.
In response, frankly, you’ve really been quite rude, have misstated my position, and have implied on more than one occasion that I’m lying. Why didn’t Mythago bother engaging with you? Because before she even entered the conversation, you implied that she would be lying.
You say that you believe that I’m basing my post on my ideology, and that it doesn’t match your experience. I’m curious what exactly your broad-based experience is, here.
You started this by asking whether anyone has “EVER (even once) seen income imputed to a woman?” Robert, the first to respond, who is no ideological ally of mine or Mythago’s, has seen it. In his own case.
Fuck of a coincidence, huh? How weird is that?
—Myca
Great point, and great clarification, GNW.
And, in fact, most of the possible explanations I was coming up with for my not seeing the output differential at my practice (Heh. “My”) has to do with not seeing much input differential for a variety of reasons.
—Myca
Gin-and-whiskey,
I am an attorney myself, but in the area of intellectual property.
I got my introduction to family law when my brother was going through a divorce. I started looking into the absolute bullshit he was facing and saw that he wasn’t alone. I’m just not sure how much I can say … or prove … here before getting banned. I have since sat in on family law hearings because I am going to partially do that as well.
You won’t get any disagreement about the BS which happens a lot in family law. It is never pretty and the circumstances (generally a he said / she said situation, combined with a preponderance standard, combined with a state-mandated requirement to try and figure out the truth especially where kids are concerned) make it worse.
The problem is that it is very hard to take the “high road” because frankly the principled stance tends to lose to the unprincipled one in most cases. Moreover, as in warfare there’s a huge advantage to “first strike” actions.
Take abuse: Imagine that you and your spouse have both whacked your kid with a belt every month or two. If you have reason to believe that your spouse will accuse you of abuse by misconstruing your behavior, then you often need to do the same, lest you end up in a bad position. And you are much better off if you make the initial accusation then if you are the initial accused. Same thing with locking down bank accounts, etc. And the same thing with spending marital funds.
So if you came to me and told me that you thought your wife was planning to divorce you, my heart would tell you “work it out or mediate” and my legal advice would have to be “well, if she hires Tommy Throatripper then you’re fucked; you better protect your assets, file first, and do ___ to protect yourself.”
This is why I only do divorce MEDIATION, not divorce LITIGATION. I’d be good at it, but in my area you have to be willing to be a complete bastard for no reason. I’m not willing to give bad legal advice and I’m not willing to advise what is needed to win.
*rolleyes* Will you please get off it?
There are posters here who have literally posted thousands of times disagreeing with me, without being banned.
If you are banned (certainly a possibility, given your behavior), it will be because you’re frequently abrasive and obnoxious.
“There are posters here who have literally posted thousands of times disagreeing with me, without being banned.”
And there are also thousands of posters who have been banned by disagreeing with you once. I have personally been banned several times here. I’m trying to get the key to discussing without totally agreeing with the “narrative”.
“This is why I only do divorce MEDIATION, not divorce LITIGATION. ”
Somebody has to also do that litigation – and push for fairness in that litigation.
1) Argue in good faith, i.e. accept that what other people say is true as far as they are concerned.
2) Don’t deliberately be an asshole.
3) Repeat as needed.
4) If someone bans you, deal with it as a temporary cooling off period and move on. It is minor: as you noted, you’ve been banned “several times,” and yet here you are still posting in this thread. (To my amazement, I may add.)
On that subject, I might note that “typical child supoprt payments” are the thread topic, and “is Myca actively wasting time and energy lying about his personal experience as a paralegal so that he can enact an evil scheme to try to fool a random IP attorney who happens to be commenter on a feminist bulletin board?” is not.
” (To my amazement, I may add.) ”
—-
Yeah, I know.
Thank you for the tips. If it’s worth anything, you’re one of the intelligent posters here, but I probably will never understand why you ignore the obvious *utter bullshit* here.
Now you can ban me for my potentially future abrasive and obnoxious behavior, you tin-plated moron, Ampersand (soon to be the successor to Hugo Schwyzer).
That’s a fair offer! I accept.
Umm. This whole article is a shame. You tell the median and average cost of child support, which is low, of course, but, then you mention 65K as an more realistic estimate. Which is about 20K more than the median income in America. I make much more, but, does that mean that it costs more to raise a child?! Does that also mean that poor people deserve less because their father’s can’t pay more? Income-based child support is a terrible idea. I obviously want my child to have a good quality of life, but, I should be ordered to pay x amount, which should be a SET price and I can CHOOSE whether or not, or where I would like to spend the money and not leave it to the discretion of the custodial parent. I personally give the mother more than I would have to if ordered, but, she “expects” that.
Now that this article is 7 years old and the citation links are all broken, maybe this info should be updated/re-examined. For example, a broken USDA link is provided to support the claim that it cost, at that time, about “$10,125/year, or $840/month” for single parents earning $17,500, and some $21,600 a year ($1,800 a month) if earning $65k.
The article asserts that ‘typical’ child support covers less than half of the cost of raising a child, which depends on the cited numbers being accurate, but where are the child-rearing cost figures derived from? As @Marc noted, why does it cost more to raise a child if you have a higher income? Aren’t some fixed costs the same, regardless? Does earning a higher income mean you need to buy more ‘stuff’ for a child, or that it must be all name-brand, new items vs. generic or second-hand? Shouldn’t there be some fundamental level sufficient to support a child’s basic needs regardless of parental income, or do the children of ‘poor’ parents not get basic food/clothing/shelter?
The numbers also do not speak to the related factor of how often the ‘non-custodial’ parent has the child for ‘visitation’ (parenting time). During that time, the NCP must feed, clothe, and provide all other care for the child, for which s/he does not get reimbursed from the CP — so that is an additional out of pocket expense on top of the ‘child support obligation.’ Also, the ‘child support’ payment does not include the cost of medical and child care, which are calculated separately, so that is another cost not being captured in the figures cited (i.e. if NCP pays a few extra hundred $$ in premiums for medical coverage or co-pays, that should be factored in).
I know it would never be a viable option, but I think unwilling parents (i.e. those who do not intend for their relationship to result in offspring, e.g. when birth control fails) should be able to cap their support payments at some reasonable amount sufficient to support a child. They must still pay for a basic, fundamental level of care in the event that a child is born, but it decouples a parent’s financial status from any incentive the other parent may have to produce a child because of that higher income, and gives certainty to all involved as to the consequences of their actions. Alas, that will never happen.
I was to this point lucky to survive child support, paid on two children of child support mgr. uncle in court, unfortunately a minor child from second failed marriage, was attempted to raise in a house of take home income of $62.00 a week, he ended up in prison. I think the child support agent & judge should be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
For appointed employees of state they had full knowledge of their actions, creating an impossible living condition IE ex & self had equal 401k”s Iwas told if you can save for the future you can pay more support. I have never earned over 27k a year. But paid 356.50 a month on the youngest of the two non-placement children.I do still have paystubs that say void. after paying insurance premiums, child sup. and taxes. they didn’t buy much food or gas as you could well imagine . must be a BoB thing.
Ok so I have no idea how so many fathers out there pay so little. In the state of Nebraska I pay for my child who was conceived when I was 15 and she was 18. Prior to taxes and child support taken out I make around 4,000 a month to support my wife and children (we are a family of 6) and I’m paying out $1030 a month total. I understand that some people just don’t pay enough but over 1k is a bit ridiculous when they figured in $100 per child for the children my wife and I have together. I literally get less that 500 every two weeks now from my job to support a family of 6. My VA disability is the only thing keeping a roof over our heads right now due to this insane amount of child support.
Why did you have so many kids if you knew you already had one you owed support to?
Elusis,
Would you ever ask the same question of a woman? Why don’t you keep your legs together, and maybe you wouldn’t have a problem. Dumb welfare c%$§.
I frankly agree that men and women should think ahead, you are probably only in favor of men thinking ahead. But stuff happens, and I’m also in favor of viewing men as actual human beings. Men and women both should bear responsibility for a child.
Sans the ugly language, I completely agree with the body-slam to you there, Elusis. You wouldn’t ask a woman that.
That said, the math doesn’t work either. 4k a month income, 1k a month child support, <1k reported net income = 2k+ going to taxes? Nobody pays that much in tax.
As a side note, I also think, Elusis, that you should not be in the field of marriage and family counseling given your obvious hatred of men.
It’s like a cop who writes a blog about hating nig$§%ers. He shouldn’t be out in the world doing stop-and-frisks if he hates a segment of society like that.
And you shouldn’t be counseling couples, which mostly involves a male partner. You can blog your hatred all you want, but people like you shouldn’t be given the opportunity to wreck lives.
Artemus, I’m afraid that we don’t have any further need of a troll with your skill set here on “Alas.” Please go post comments on Youtube; that seems more your speed. Best of luck to you.
Robert’s right, the numbers don’t add up. I know of no state in which it is permissible to take 67% of after tax income for a support order. 50% is pretty standard so I would not expect Artemus to pay more than $750 per paycheck to a support order. Even if the numbers added up I’d be skeptical. I’ve never seen a support order even half as large as the one he claims to be paying. How much must his income have been at the time the amount was set? A lot more than I make and I make a lot more than $48k per year.
Robert, if a woman were complaining that she had to pay child support to a kid from her previous marriage and it’s totally unfair because that takes away from the children she had with her current partner, it would be absolutely appropriate to ask her why she didn’t take her financial obligations to her first child into account when deciding to have more children. There’s a difference between complaining about the financial burden of having children, and treating a child as an annoying hindrance to one’s new, better life with children who aren’t unfortunately a relic of one’s ex.
Robert, I’ll gladly reply to you.
My comment was meant in an arch manner (admittedly, it was beyond bone-dry.)
In general, I completely support body autonomy and every person’s right to make individual decisions about their own reproduction. In practice, obviously I prefer that people make thoughtful decisions about reproduction as much as possible, and I wish that there were more of a cultural narrative about economic planning for children. In reality, once children exist, I absolutely believe that regardless of my (or anyone’s) opinions, they are here and must be cared for as well as we (individuals AND society) are able.
My comment, and one that I’ve made a couple of other times in this and other discussions about child support, is intended to tweak a particular kind of outraged father who appears every so often – the father who had one or more children in one relationship, then went on to have more children in another relationship, and is furious that supporting the first batch of children is interfering with his lifestyle with the second batch. There seems to be a certain amount of unexamined entitlement going on, as if the existence of the second family should negate the needs of the first family, and the first family is doing something wrong or bad by existing and putting economic pressure on the second family.
The fact is, these fathers (generally, at least) apparently knew the first family existed when they decided to start the second family. And so I have to wonder, what did they think was going to happen? That the first family would cease to exist? That they would say “oh, sorry, you have your REAL family now so we’ll just leave you alone then”? (This is embedded in a whole cultural narrative which tacitly supports heterosexual men “trading up” an aging wife for a younger, more attractive one.)
The question that I often see missing from this child support conversation, which I know I’ve asked in the past, is essentially “what makes you think that just because you like this new family better, you owe any less support to your previous family?” That seems to be the implied source of some of the anger in the “my child support is hampering my life with my new children” comments, and I’d like to see it brought more out into the open. It’s OK if that’s how someone feels – feelings don’t have to be logical. But expecting that you should get to behave that way, that the world should line up in accordance with those feelings, is pretty unreasonable.
Seriously? Reintroduction of primogeniture and seniority, cash gets handed out to kids by order of lineage. That’s modern feminist child support policy?
Alex – do you mind explaining why you think Elusis (or anyone else) is proposing anything even remotely like that?
I’m not Alex, but I do see (I think) what he (she?) means.
If the support order for the first family never goes down no matter how many new children the father has, then that is effectively saying that the first child (if the first family had only one child, as in our example here) is being given preference over other children. That’s not as extreme as Alex put it, but in the case of a father with one child from a past marriage and six in a new marriage, it goes in that direction.
Ah. I read that sentence differently; I took “ less support” to mean “less than you offer your new family”, not “less than you offered your first family before you had your second family”.
If someone has two children, and then has two more children, then – assuming that person’s total income didn’t significantly increase – each child will get less. That’s true. But that person is responsible for all four children equally, regardless of whether they had all four children with the same partner or not.
But they AREN’T equally responsible, at least not according to the officials deciding the child support allocation. The first kids get more support.
Wow, that went down the rabbit hole fast. We went from discussing a parent’s resentment that Kid #1 still has financial needs instead of just vanishing off the face of the earth, to discussing how Kid #1 is growing sleek and fat off child support while his half-siblings have little more than an intact family and stale gruel to sustain themselves. (None of you were oldest children, I’m thinking.)
The purpose of child support is to help pay for the child’s living expenses. The amount of that support is based on a formula that takes into account things like parents’ income, the division of time with each parents, and oddly mandatory union dues, in my state. Kid #1 may very well not get “more” than his half-siblings. He is entitled to a fixed amount of support, and the parent paying that support does not get to use that amount of money to spend on other things – whether those other things are video games or utility bills or additional children. His need for that support also doesn’t vanish because the supporting parent decided to have more children. “Yes, this is the amount of income needed to pay for your expenses, but Mommy has an adorable little new baby at home with her new boyfriend, so screw you, kid. Get a paper route or something.”
I don’t think the sarcasm adds anything to the discussion, mythago. I’m an oldest child, for what that’s worth, and my biological daughter will be the oldest child if (God forbid) I have more kids.
So regardless of how you slice the sarcasm – and I gave up about two sentences in, so I don’t know what your actual position is and it isn’t worth the labor to find out – we end up with what Alex said. Primogeniture. First is more important.
I see the point Robert/Alex/Ampersand are making.
First, those who decry the current system do not necessarily ‘resent the existence’ of a first child (others have said “first family,” but having an unplanned child out of wedlock does not quite a family make, unless you’re talking about a marriage where spousal maintenance is also an issue). Anyway, having made a child with someone who you will no longer be producing children with should not overtly limit your family-planning options to the extent it now apparently does.
Unless the NCP of child #1 resolves him/herself to a life of paying child support and having occassional visits with said child, s/he will likely start a new ‘family’ have have subsequent, intended children with a new partner. So… why does child #1 get more than children #2, 3, etc. if the first child’s basic needs can be met with less support? As noted by others, if all the children were born to the same set of parents in wedlock, they would proportionally all get ‘less’ in total. In fact, a married couple can decide to live on a shoestring budget and provide for their children’s minimal needs, with no mandate from the state so long as children are appropriately cared for. I know many families who have many children and end up with a lower standard of living than if they chose to limit to 1 or 2 — but they are free to make that choice! That choice shouldn’t just be the province of married parents, IMO. If you bring a child into the world, you risk that the partner you reproduced with will not always be there and you may not expect to keep the same standard of living, although of course should be able to minimally meet the needs of a child (otherwise, we may as well outlaw divorce again, and force marriages between those who conceive children together).
I do not believe that child support formulas (certainly not in all states) account for a parent’s obligations to children conceived later. In fact, contrary to Mythago’s point, not all CS formulas adjust for the amount of time aparent spends with his/her child (in NY, even if both parents spend equal custodial time with the child, the higher income-earner is deemed the NCP and must pay the required basic support obligation, to the lower earner, with no credit for the parenting time spent, during which they, too, incur expenses for feeding, clothing, and entertaining the child).
When it comes to the choice to have additional kids, why not set a minimum threshold of basic support for each child. If future children would cause you to dip below that basic amount for child #1, the court can say, “too bad — you get no further reductions.” However, if you decide to have a family that includes future kids, why should they be automatically entitled to less than child #1?
The only answer I can come up with is because that child came first, and as long as all kids can be cared for — why should that matter??
I don’t think the stealth-insult routine adds much to the discussion myself, Robert, but you know, YMMV.
“Primogeniture” is dishonest because it’s not about birth order; it’s about the obligation to support one’s children. If I have Child #1 and #2 with an ex, I don’t pay more for Child 1 because he was born first. I pay support for both children because, being in a separate household than them, I have an obligation to provide financial support.
JAM: I’m still not following the argument that the primary concern of laws about child support must be the support-paying parent’s desire to have children with their current partner.
I’m also not following the unquestioned assumption that the children of the former relationship must by definition be getting “more” than the children of the current relationship. “You are entitled to a calculated level of support” != “you are entitled to a higher standard of living than your siblings.” Support is a formula tied to parental income; it’s not a guarantee of a superior lifestyle.
As for why it’s different than in married households, it’s because they’re married households. Just like a married couple doesn’t have a custody or visitation order. There’s a joint obligation to support the children. Because nobody has had to have a legal union dissolved by a court, there’s no court oversight.
The ‘minimum support’ argument seems to suggest that, bluntly, people can breed their way out of financial support for children whose other parent they no longer care for.
Also, for the “birth order” argument – if someone has children #1 and #2 from their spouse, goes and has an affair which leads to child #3 (which the lover becomes the CP for), and then manages to work things out with their spouse and the marriage survives, then that person has to pay child support for child #3, but not #1 and #2.
Birth order may usually correlate to child support, but it’s not what this is about, and it’s rather silly to claim otherwise.
And in a married/co-habiting household, there is only one household to pay for.
“It doesn’t cost $XXX per month to raise a child!” almost always ignores that children don’t just have to be fed daily and clothed regularly. They have to have a place to live, separate from you if you aren’t the CP. They have to have water and electricity and garbage service separate from you. They have to have furniture and home/renter’s insurance and a phone line and Internet service separate from you. It costs more to maintain children in a separate household than it would if you maintained all your children in one home.
And nothing about that changes if you decide to add new children to your separate home. Just because you increased your cost of living, doesn’t cause the previous children’s cost of living to decrease. You can’t save money by making kids from family #1 share bedrooms with kids from family #2 – even if that’s what you do when they visit, they still have a custodial home to go home to, which continues to cost money to maintain.
It is EXPENSIVE to separate families into different households – the old adage “two can live as cheaply as one” may not be true, but partner co-habitation even without kids does save some money. Anybody who’s ever gone through a breakup with a co-habiting partner sans kids knows that there’s a whole ream of costs you were sharing that suddenly fall 100% on you again. (This has kept more than one person in a bad relationship far longer than it should have.)
And EZ – excellent point. I’ve worked with families where there was no small amount of resentment on the part of one partner that the other was on the hook for providing for a child that was the result of an affair. I’ve also worked with people considering open or polyamorous relationships, where a major concern of one or both partners was “I can’t tolerate the possibility that you might create a child with someone else whom you’d then have obligations to.”
Child support should have a nation average based on cost of living in that particular region. Where as if that region suggests the cost to raise a child on monthly basis is $800 then mother pays $400 and father pays $400 to the child support office regardless of financial status. Funds should be placed on a debt card that some states are issuing to custodial parents and tracked on six month basic. That would not only insure both parents are financially accountable but would also force people to have decent jobs, stop dependency on government assistance . No more going into it knowing you would only pay $25 a week or not at all or being able to live off the government and the big payday that some women get from the celebrities.
@Robert Hogan makes a good point — base it on the costs to raise a child, not the income of parents especially where the parents are not married or cohabitating (and thus, had no established ‘household’ where the child is accustomed to a certain standard of living).
The current system gives incentive for a person who wants children, but is in a poor financial situation, to attempt to do so with a more well-to-do partner (even if that partner is trying to avoid a pregnancy). By using localized average child-rearing cost, it still provides for support of children, but eliminates these harmful (IMO) financial incentives that often times create sitautions with absentee parents (i.e., the one who was trying to avoid the pregnancy and did not want to create a family, nor the lifelong financial commitment that goes with it).
Especially in NYS, the cost to raise children (cost of living in general) is WAAYYY higher downstate, so we upstate NY-er’s who may earn 50% the wages we would get in NYC are subject to the same maximum combined income used to determine basic support, and that is ridiculous.
I don’t necessarily agree that each parent must pay 50-50 to the CS office, but rather custody should be determined based on child’s best interest, and each parent’s share of the support is adjusted for the proportional amount of time they have physical custody (this would avoid the NY outcome where, even for 50-50 custody, the higher income-earner is deemed the NCP and must pay the other parent the calculated formula amount, with no adjustment for custodial time). Debit cards would probably create more beaurocracy, but if there is an efficient way to do it, so be it.
I got re-married two years after my divorce 13 years ago. My first marriage resulted in two children, one of which is emancipated the other is 17. The abuse I received from the family court system would have had me on the run if it weren’t for my present family. One incident where I was laid off and the judge refused to adjust my obligated support on the basis that I refused another position at half my salary and would have added another hour to my already 1.5 hour commute. For that one year, my present family lived on well below the poverty line. My wife had to use her salary to pay the $1,200 monthly support to keep me out of jail. We lived on hot dogs and processed mac and cheese. My two girls didn’t understand why they could not go to music lessons anymore. It took me over five years to recoup from that financial disaster. How can the family court system blatantly starve one family to feed another??? And because I tried to fight it, I was rewarded with paying her attorney fees. BTW, my final payment of $600 to her attorney was in pennies from the bank in boxes of $25.00. Gotta get some type of satisfaction…
I’m in the position of the man paying $1000/mo on a $5000/mo income. Let me state, clearly, that I WANT TO PAY for my child’s welfare. On the other hand, because I pay as much $$$ as I do, my ex does not have to have a job. She doesn’t anyway, her husband makes plenty. In effect, I’m paying for a good part of their mortgage. I’m paying the same amount of CP as when I was first divorced 10 years ago; at the time, it seems like cost of living was much lower than now. My income hasn’t increased meaningfully in that time, various economic shocks have kept wages pretty stagnant in my field in this town; most people in my field, to be able to make higher income, move a lot, which I have not done so as to remain close to my daughter. Now, I find myself in larger and larger amounts of debt to be able to maintain my own separate household, meanwhile my ex has a better and better quality of life. I drive a 10 yr old car, she just got a new one. All while working on her ‘direct sales’ pyramid-scheme ‘business’, that’s clearly simply a tax shelter for her and her husband.
While I see that on the various posts here some highly varying figures for paying child support, clearly there’s fair and then there’s fair. To say that a family that affords a new car every 3 years, has a boat, land and their own home, somehow manages to fit in a nice exotic trip somewhere every year, also requires $1000/mo in child support from an ex who is struggling to pay his bills — and the mother is working a direct sales business marketing beauty supplies to men — and then tells my daughter they can’t afford to send her to camp — ummm, hello?
Umm. This whole article is a shame. You tell the median and average cost of child support, which is low, of course, but, then you mention 65K as an more realistic estimate. Which is about 20K more than the median income in America. I make much more, but, does that mean that it costs more to raise a child?! Does that also mean that poor people deserve less because their father’s can’t pay more? Income-based child support is a terrible idea. I obviously want my child to have a good quality of life, but, I should be ordered to pay x amount, which should be a SET price and I can CHOOSE whether or not, or where I would like to spend the money and not leave it to the discretion of the custodial parent. I personally give the mother more than I would have to if ordered, but, she “expects” that.
Let me put my two cents in here…. I am a single mother, I make $30K a year and I receive no financial support from my son’s father. He does not take my son for more than 3 hours a week at most. He works part time 18 hours a week and his parents pay for everything from his rent to his gas. He is FULLY capable of working full time, but would rather watch tv and hang out at the mall with his new, convicted felon, girlfriend. (He is 29 btw) He refuses to pay anything financially because he claims it’s my “job” to raise our son. Yes, I’m making ends meet, but it’s very difficult for me. I pay $550 a month for daycare expenses, $50 a month in medications, and $50 for our twice monthly pediatrician visits. I’m not counting the numerous visits to pediatric specialists we have to go to. My average cost of raising my son is about $800 a month most months. I’ve heard him say numerous times that another reason he doesn’t want to pay child support is because he wouldn’t want me to spend the money on things for myself or gas for my car, etc…. I’ve also seen that same comment made above and I hate when people say that. Am I supposed to wait to fill my son’s prescriptions or take him to the doctor until I get that child support every month?? No…. IF he paid child support, it would just go into my bank account just like my paychecks do and I will spend it as I see fit. Now if it just so happens that I buy myself a pair of jeans the same week that child support comes in – tough sh*t, I pay my son’s expenses as they arise. I would not wait until child support comes in to pay for daycare or medications.
Ok so I’ve seen a few comments that may pertain to me partially from my previous post so I thought I’d share a bit more about it since mine seems to be out of the norm.
My son was concieved when I was 15 and she was 18. She made the choice to leave me while she was pregnant. Since then I’ve had to fight off numerous false accusations in court from her ranging from assualt to protection orders. She has since married and had 2 more children as I have also married and had 4 with my wife of 12 yrs.
I joined the Army back in 2012 because I knew I needed the income and benefits to support my current family as well as provide some support for my son. I never planned to get out early but I was forced to medically retire.
I’m currently paying just over 1,000 dollars a month on my son making about 4,000 per monty prior to taxes.
Now that being said, I don’t feel that she should profit so much from what had ages been reversed I would have been thrown in jail for. She has a husband and is capable of working herself. I don’t know if he works but she does work at a McDonald’s. She has refused to allow me to provide health issurance and in doing so denied my son all the benefits available to a vet’s child in the state of Nebraska, soley because she says she’ll get less help from the state if she does. I’ve went as far as to personally speak with the county attorney about this and now they’re looking at putting her in a staus of non compliance and denying her aid from welfare programs.
Now I pose the question, should a man who was not of legal age be made to pay ammounts that can cover a food bill or rent for a family of six? It’s called support, not a free ride (that may be a bit extreme). I agree I should help support my son and have made every posssible effort to do so. I guess perhaps I’m a little bitter over my son having a deadbeat mom (sorry I just don’t have a better term for the nonsense she pulls)
I feel bad for moms in reverse situations, that are doing the right thing and not getting squat for support from the father ( like the lady above who only gets 97 a month. That is criminal in my opinion). It is unfortunate that we have both men and women who abuse the system, but it seems like you rareely hear about the dirtbag mothers and only hear about the dirtbag fathers.
Oh as a side note to the false accusations, she has never gotten in trouble for them. I’ve went as far as to call the police after visiting my son just to file a report as to what happened to avoid false accusations against me ( and yes I took witnesses with me it’s just that bad)
Sorfy a few typos on my above post.
I joined the Army in 2002 not 2012.
A few other minor misspellings since I’m typing from a cell phone.
I would love to hear feedback on my post and will try to answer questions I.a timely fashion.
My question:
I am currently a stay at home wife and mother. I am about to file for seperation and I want to know what a fair amount for our 10 month old son would be. My husband makes 10/hr plus around 10 hours of over time (time and a half) a week. We live in North Carolina and I want to try and keep this seperation (whether it be temporary or permanent) out of court and handled with a mediator. What is a fair amount that I can ask for per month? I am going to start looking for a job but I haven’t worked in two years because when I for pregnant he told me he didn’t want me that he didn’t want me to work and that my job was to stay home and raise our child. What kind of advice do you have and what is a fair amount for me to ask for?
IANAL and I could be wrong and every state has its own unique set of rules to screw people over with, but I don’t think keeping the court out of it is going to stick. If and when you move on to legal dissolution, then the court is going to set what it thinks is fair.
Advice: Reconcile and stay married if it is humanly possible.
What’s fair: Assuming you are splitting the work of raising your child equally, and assuming you are working as many hours a week as he is at a minimum wage job or jobs, and nobody is paying more daycare or healthcare costs for the child than the other parent, then $230 a month is what the North Carolina support calculator comes up with.
My current amount of child support is 1275 a month for 2 children. I am a disabled veteran and I currently am not working. I go to school full time so that I can get a good paying job. I spent my savings on a lawyer so that I can get my support changed but so far nothing has happened and the court date keeps getting continued. It has been over a year of me battling this situation and I am still told that I have to pay 1275 a month. I barely make over 2000 a month with school and disability benefits so how am I to survive on that? I have other bills in which my wife gladly helps me in but its impossible to stay afloat.
The court didn’t set your support at $1275 when your income was $2000; your income was obviously higher when you had a job.
Did you quit your job and go back to school, and then petitioned the court for a change in your payment? Or did you lose the job through another person’s decision, and found that going back to school was the best available option?
If the latter, then I am fully in sympathy with your position. If the former, then most of that evaporates. I do think that the system should be responsive to changes in circumstance (even voluntary ones), such that support is set as a percentage of income or something like that, but that isn’t the way it works, and the way it works is not a secret. If you jump out of the plane, then request a parachute, that’s on you.