Child support amounts are grossly unfair

Great Debates
1

This popped up in my news feed yesterday. Its an article detailing how Halle Berry was ordered to pay her ex-husband, a Canadian model, the sum of $16000 per month for their 6 year old daughter Nahla*.

The cost of raising a child from birth to 18, according to the USDA in 2013, is only $241080. Ms. Berry will have paid that amount by summer of next year. While inflation makes the true value at just north of $300000, its still only a 2.6% increase from the previous year. Here’s a breakdown of how much the $241080 will be per year, according to CNN Money.

By any definition, Halle Berry is overpaying, but we see such overpayment all the time. Dennis Rodman was busted for not paying $500000 to his ex-wife for their 2 pre-teen kids. This article talks about the fight NBA star Chris Bosh had been having with his ex-wife for their child. She claimed she was facing foreclosure for his “paltry” payment of $2600 a month. Before taxes, that’s $31200 a year! Its like this kid got a job, and a better one than minimum wage! Would she be complaining of foreclosure if the kid got out of her diapers and went to work everyday? Its free money she’s getting! With no rent to pay, I’m sure the kid can survive comfortably from birth to 18 on $31200 a year!

The message is clear: if you’re rich and can afford it, child support amount is tied to your wealth. Berry is worth about $70 million, according to celebritynetworth.com, so $16000 a month is nothing to her. Nevermind that her ex-husband is worth $4.5 million himself, more money that most of us will ever see.

I think its unfair and frankly stupid to tie child payments to the value of one of the parents to increase the price. I can understand the reasoning of decreasing the payments if both parents are poor, but not increasing it if the parent is rich. If you’re poor, you just can’t pay, money won’t magically appear because of a court ruling. However, if you’re rich, that doesn’t mean your kid needs to be clothed in cashmere onesies, Italian leather sandals, and a diamond tiara. Your kid is the same as any other kid.

I’m not convinced by arguments that the child needs to maintain their lifestyle. I’ve no problems with a rich kid whose parents get divorced and suddenly he has to walk to school and eat peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for lunch. It feels like we’re fleecing the richer parent to subsidize the kids’ lifestyles while most people would see the obvious problem if we made the same argument that the government and the taxpayers much subsidize every child’s lifestyle to “rich” to prevent “harming” him.

And lets drop any antiquated notion of “if they don’t want to pay, they shouldn’t have kids”. Its akin to telling women if they didn’t want to be assaulted, they shouldn’t dress like that, or they can’t get an abortion because if they didn’t want to have kids, they shouldn’t have sex. Punishment, and that’s what this is, should fit the crime. Its disproportional that rich parents have to pay more for kids and their only recourse is to either be poor or not have kids.

My solution to this is that all child payments should be based on a formula, maybe adjusted by state or county based on cost of living where the child resides, but that formula should be tied closely to the cost of raising a child. No matter how rich the parent is, the payments are the same for everyone and should be increased only due to circumstances such as medical bills, needs a babysitter, or some other extreme. If we use the $241080 figure from above, that comes out to about $1100 per month. None of this $16000 a month payments for anyone, no child is worth that much. Children have the right to live with food, shelter, and clothing, but not sports cars, mansions, and European vacations.

Doing so would abate the practice, perhaps accusingly made towards certain types of women, of getting pregnant by famous and rich men for money. If she can only expect a thousand a month, maybe some people will not attempt such a morally questionable pursuit. Maybe it would be more trouble than its worth.

*I specifically chose this example because most alimony payments we read about are from men to women and I didn’t want this to be a male/female issue and be accused of being anti-women

2

Doesn’t a child have a right to live in the lifestyle he or she would have been afforded had his or her parents remained together?

3

No, I don’t think so. Why would that be a right?

4

If it is a right, why is this right only enforced in this circumstance? If a parent is fired and the income is greatly lessened, is the parent’s former employer obligated to pay child support to make up that gap?

5

“Free money”? “No rent to pay”? Where do you live where landlords don’t charge rent on rooms occupied by children?

As for $31200 per year being lavish, note that full-time center-based daycare alone in the US runs to about $12000 per year on average.

“Fleecing”? “Punishment”? “No child is worth that much”?

Call me a naive old maid, but I was under the impression that people who have children generally want to give them care and advantages to the extent of their ability. Why should we expect family courts to operate under the assumption that parents who get divorced suddenly want to pay as little as possible for supporting their own children?

I’ve got no problem with any kid being brought up in a frugal lifestyle, however wealthy and/or happily married his/her parents may be.

But can you really see no valid arguments against making a child’s lifestyle contingent on his/her parents’ marital status rather than on their material wealth or childrearing philosophy? You don’t think that a child who sees a parent suddenly taking away things that were previously willingly given, just because the parents have had a falling-out, is going to start questioning that parent’s love for them?

Oh, now I see what this is all about. Disrupting a child’s lifestyle and family relationships is indeed a trivial matter compared to the necessity of sticking it to golddigging bitches.

However, I think your crusade has rather muddled up the issues of divorce and nonmarital paternity suits.

6

I don’t think you can look at celebrity payments the same way. Halle Berry’s kid will probably need security in a way the average Joe Jr would never need. Special private schools that are designed to be secure, possibly security guards or whatever else might be needed to protect the kid from people looking to make a statement by hurting a celebrity’s kid or make a buck by kidnapping a celebrity’s kid. I’m sure they will require lots of other stuff that non famous children wouldn’t necessarily need… Granted, $16,000 seems excessive but we have no idea what that money goes toward so I am not going to automatically assume it is all being used for diamond-encrusted binkies.

7

The difference between kids and sexual assault is that kids are 100% preventable. Yes, even by men.

8

My point was that since rent is being paid by the mom, and presumably would be whether or not she had a kid, then the extra income from the child would not need to be spent on rent. Its an addition to whatever income she already has

Its not lavish in that its makes one wealthy. But any poor or middle class person could use an extra $31200 a year to increase their standard of living. And even with daycare, that’s still almost $20000 free dollars to use how you see fit.

If that is true, which is isn’t, then child support should be voluntary and the amount entirely determined by the paying parent. Since its not true and people don’t want to pay for a variety of reasons, one of them being they don’t want to pay for supporting their kid, then that’s why I think it should be tacked to a common formula that presumes the basics of necessity and little else

Whatever harm that comes from that should not be mandated by the court. A court cannot force parents to act a certain way towards a child barring abuse, and if parents are wealthy but choose to live frugally, a judge cannot force them to spend more money on the child, again barring abuse. If a parent doesn’t want to pay for a child they are no longer caring for 24/7 with a parent they are no longer married to, then the child will just have to live with the consequence. The government even assumes a benefit to married couples raising a child, conferring upon them tax benefits and other legal benefits. Nobody can force a couple to not divorce due to the well-being of a child so I see parallels in not forcing the richer parent to continue to subsidize a former lifestyle. Unless you’re prepared to force parents to do a lot of other things for the child, then I don’t think you can justify using money as some kind of parental substitute

:rolleyes: I guess some people will just presume what they want regardless of how wrong they are. You are free to question me all you want, but your logic is lacking. My personal feelings towards “golddigging bitches” such as Gabriel Aubry has little to do with the topic

If you have a point, make it

9

The interesting question here is why the father got custody of a 6 year old girl. Was no one else surprised?

10

Well, I wasn’t expecting to see Halle Berry named as the poster child for these outrages.

11

Come on now. If you have a child and rent an apartment, might you need an extra room? More food? Clothes? Doctors’ visits? You can make this argument without assuming that kids don’t cost money.

12

Not really - I know quite a few men who got primary custody after a divorce.

Maybe the two parents talked it over and made the decision for the father to take custody rather than the mother? Ms. Berry travels extensively as part of her career, works very long hours when she is employed, and that can be very disruptive to a child’s schooling and upbringing. Perhaps Mr. Berry’s lifestyle has a more regular schedule. Or something else.

13

In addition to Marley’s point, it should be noted that people who own mortgaged homes are not renters. The house payment didn’t magically shrink because Chris Bosh moved out- and considering the economy of the time, she could very well have been stuck in the house.

14

Do you have kids?

I live in a high cost of living area. A center-based daycare is around $2000 a month for an infant. A 2-bedroom apartment in my models building is $500 more than a 1-bedroom. A family health insurance plan is about $400 more than an individual one. Then there is the monthly order of diapers, wipes, formula and supplies- that usually adds up to $250 or so.

And this is before all the other expenses- babysitters, car seats, clothes, books, copays, paying off hospital fees from the birth, etc. And then the intangibles- not ever going out, taking a hit to your career, spending every evening washing bottles, having to listen to the Wiggles…

Yeah, I am sure you are all for paying someone $1,100 a month to raise your child. That’s a hell of a bargain! But if we are throwing away the current system based on ability to pay and replacing it with a flat rate, I think that it makes more sense to base it on what things actually cost, including time and devices.

A nanny in DC goes for about $25 an hour, and time and a half for overtime. So if the non-custodial parent is taking responsibility for half of that, we are at $350 a day, or about $10,500 a month plus expenses. That’s how much the labor the custodial parent is putting in is worth.

Don’t want to pay it? Then keep custody of your child. Joint custody is the norm these days, and when both parties make similar incomes, usually no child support is called for.

15

Saying that a child has a “right” to a better life just because the parents are wealthy is the same thing as saying that this child has more rights than the child of poor parents. Parental obligations, societal expectations?-yes. Right?-no.

16

Be that as it may, it still doesn’t amount to the amount of a full-time, non-minimum wage job. Its extra money, is what I’m saying. If you dispute the amount, at least agree with the concept. The child is bringing in money that adds up to a net positive subtracting the expenses of raising it.

17

I’m not at all troubled by this. If you’re rich and can afford it, child support amount is tied to your wealth. Why not? Kids of rich parents should have available (at parents discretion on how to use) considerable resources. $16,000 per month might be higher than necessary, and maybe $9,000 is a better figure. I assume, however, that the judge that ordered it (or perhaps the parties agreed to this figure) knew the circumstances better than we do.

18

Then my response would be that she’s not entitled t to the house. If you lose your job, you move to a small place, sell off your car, and use the bus. If she can’t afford the house, she should move somewhere smaller

This is why I specifically said that I’d be fine with a formula that takes into account the cost of living of the area.

Again, not a flat rate, a base rate that takes into account such intangibles such as medical (a newborn, for instance, would need more compared to a healthy 8 year old who maybe goes to a checkup once a year) and the cost of living for the area.

Why not is because we don’t presume a lifestyle right that kids should have beyond food, shelter, and clothing. If we do, like Czarcasm said, why not make employers of fired parents pay for the child? Why not taxpayers pay all children to living like Ms. Berry’s kid’s lifestyle?

19

Didn’t the living space available to her and the child increase when he moved out? If it is ordained that the child and mother be allowed to maintain their lives they way they were accustomed before the divorce, then shouldn’t they be asked to move into a appropriately smaller abode that gives them exactly that?

20

Who’s saying that a child has a “right” to a “better” life just because the parents are wealthy? I, for one, am already on record as saying that any parents are entitled to raise their child in a frugal material lifestyle if they want to, no matter how wealthy they are.

What I’m dubious about is the proposition that the child’s material lifestyle should be suddenly and severely downgraded ***just because the parents choose to split up. ***

Of course, if both divorcing parents agree that the child should live more frugally after the divorce, for whatever reason, there’s no problem. Their child, their rules, and society has no business interfering with that.
But: we’re not talking cases of parental agreement here, are we? We’re talking situations in which one parent thinks the child should get more material support than the other parent is in favor of.

And when parents can’t or won’t fulfill their basic parental duty of figuring out a mutually agreed-upon way to raise their mutual child, that’s when the courts step in.