Child Support General Overview

Closely related to the decisions that must be made regarding child custody are those decisions relating to the support of a child. In most instances, the parent who does not have physical custody of a child must provide child support to the parent who has custody. Child support agreements are essentially financial in nature. A child support worksheet is included in this kit to allow you to gather the necessary information for these decisions.

Recent federal legislation (the Family Support Act of 1988) requires each state to provide some type of formula or guidelines for the determination of child support awards. In the attempt to provide specific financial guidelines for child support provisions, many states have adopted detailed legislation and rules regarding how to arrive at a fair support amount. Some states have provided only simple formulas.

Before you and your spouse consider the legal aspects of child support, you should both understand that child support terms are the provisions of marital settlement agreements and divorce orders that are most often defaulted upon or ignored. Tragically, this has resulted in the creation of a new class of poverty-level individuals: children of divorced parents. The majority of court-ordered child support payments are neither paid in full nor on time. Nearly one-third of the children entitled to child support receive no support at all.

The reasons for this tragedy are many, but perhaps the most important stems from the frustration of the non-custodial parent having to pay for the support for children that he or she does not live with or raise. If you and your spouse can come to a reasonable and workable agreement regarding the custody and visitation arrangements for your child, there will be a far greater chance that your child support agreement will also be seen as reasonable. As you approach your child support discussions, please keep these tragic statistics firmly in mind.

B. The Law of Child Support

Both natural parents of a minor child have a legal obligation to provide adequate support for the child until the child reaches 18 years of age (21 in some states). This legal duty includes providing food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education for a child. This is the law in every state. Parents of adopted children also have this same obligation. Child support, however, is not merely the delivery of a monthly support payment. It is a legal, moral, and ethical obligation to provide full care and support for your offspring. Divorce does not end this legal obligation for support. It merely complicates the duty. Both parents have an equal duty to support their children. In the vast majority of divorces which involve children, however, the mother is awarded physical custody of those children. Also, in the majority of family situations, it is the mother who earns a disproportionately lower income than the father.

Thus, in most divorce situations involving children, there will be an immediate and definite need for considerable child support to be provided by the father. Regardless of which parent has physical custody and even when the incomes of both parents are equal, both parents still need to provide their fair share of support for the child. A child should not be forced to suffer economically because of the divorce of his or her parents.When a single family unit is divided into two households upon divorce, the total living costs will naturally escalate. Two homes must be maintained instead of one. Two sets of furniture, appliances, and housewares must be provided. Two cars, two televisions, two of almost every household item will need to be purchased and maintained. Unfortunately, the income of the divorced family will not increase. In many cases, in fact, it may actually decrease as the parent with custody may find it more difficult to maintain a full-time job. Because both parents are no longer able to share their time with the child as easily, child care costs may also increase.The goals of child support laws are to achieve a fair division of the income of both parents in order to provide for the satisfactory support of the children of a marriage. As much as is possible, a child should be entitled to share in the income of both parents, despite their divorce.

In most states which have such guidelines, however, the rules are only to be used to provide a structure for determining a minimum amount of child support. A court has the authority to order more or less child support if necessary. While each state's guidelines may be somewhat different, they all generally require that if the non-custodial parent has sufficient income, he or she must provide a specific level of monthly support to the parent who has custody of the child. Increasingly, states are adopting legislation that goes beyond simply providing a monthly payment for child support.

Some of these recent laws may require various non-monetary forms of support: that a parent provide health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance for the parent with the child as sole beneficiary, or that the family home not be sold for a particular period of time. All of these provisions are an attempt to provide sufficient security for a child of divorce to prevent the child from requiring welfare or other social service support from the state.