25% :eek:
I mean, my mom has a daughter whose father just ran away, and she’s owed tens of thousands in back support she will never see.
But I’ve run the calculations, and if something were to happen to my mom, I could take care of my sister for a lot less than 25% of my net income, especially when taxes are taken into consideration.
And if there were another parent who was also chipping in a supposed 25%…is the system saying it takes fully 1/2 an average adult income to raise a child :dubious:
Well, it was 14 years ago, and I know there have been a lot of changes since then. I remember having to provide receipts for everything I spent money on, and all he had to show was proof of income. I had a lawyer, too, and we tried to get the same info, but it wasn’t required. (I didn’t need a lawyer to get CS; I had the lawyer for getting the divorce)
Yes, his lawyer was a huge ass. I remember getting papers asking for information on all my real estate holdings and off-shore bank accounts. Umm, yeah. :rolleyes: I had moved back in with my mother and was working in retail (making $8.00 an hour) and going to school at night. Real estate holdings, my ass.
He (the ex-husband) was basically an ass, the type who would quit his job once the CS people caught up with him. This was back when they had just starting taking CS out of paychecks automatically. The first year I got it, he was supposed to pay me directly. I rarely got it. I think it was around 1990/1991 that they started requiring all CS (no matter how friendly the two parents were) to be garnished from paychecks.
My second husband adopted my daughter soon after we got married, so I don’t get CS any more, but the ex did owe me quite a chunk of back support when ny husband adopted her. I ended up getting it in bits for a couple of years at tax time; obviously I was getting his tax refunds.
Not to sound too bitchy, but I would have loved to have seen the look on his face when he got a letter (instead of a check) informing him of where his money went.
Not really. At most, it’s saying that 50% of each adult’s income after certain deductions are made (the deductions Minnesota makes include pension contributions,health insurance premiums,medical expenses,union dues and existing support orders, in addition to taxes) is approximately what intact families at that income level do spend on the first child (the rate for two children is 30%).
Just for the heck of it, I figured out what my child support obligation would be for two children if my state used the same rules as Minnesota- 30% of my income after the deductions Minnesota makes . I would have to pay 12,0820 . My husband would have to pay about the same. So that comes to about 25,640. Do we spend that much on our two kids?
Well ,we spend $7300 per year on private school tuition , health insurance for the kids comes to $2600 more than individual coverage, $1560 goes to their 529 college accounts . I’m up to 11,460 and I haven’t bought a stitch of clothing, any food, school supplies, paid for any entertainment or extracurricular activities, paid a co-payment at the doctor or pharmacy, taken anyone to the dentist, paid for summer camp or accounted for the difference in household expenses (rent, electricity, gas etc) between maintaining a household for an adult and maintaining one for an adult and two kids . I’m guessing those will use up the other 14,180 easily.
Are all of those expenses absolutely necessary? No. Do some people at my income level not have some of them? Sure, I know lots of people at my income level who don’t send their children to private school. Most of them are still going to spend close to that $7300 on two kids in one way or another, though. They go on more frequent or more expensive vacations than we do, send their kids to camp for the whole summer instead of a week or two, buy their children more or more expensive clothes, etc.
If my husband and I divorce, should they lose the advantages of having parents with fairly good incomes simply because my husband can’t provide the advantages on his own and I don’t want to pay more than my half of the amount it costs to minimally support two children? I don’t think so.
Doreen wrote:
I estimated around that, too. That is just slightly more than the tax breaks that would accrue due to having a child (i.e. if you spend $2000 and get $2000 worth of tax breaks off your bottom line, the cost is equal to not having a child.) The remaining clothing, food, etc. does not add up to %25 of my net income (depending on of course how you calculate it,it certainly would eat up more than 25% of my disposable income, so that I would be able to spend hardly anything on entertainment for myself, but nowhere near my take-home pay.)
Doreen wrote:
ahhh, but maintaining two houses costs more than one, so all else being equal, there will be less money to go around after rent/mortgage/utilities are taken into account. Children shouldn’t bear the brunt of this, but they don’t have the right to live the same lifestyle on the back of the non-custodial parent.
Likely I was, sorry I just snagged a quick number.
Also, I forgot this part, I do NOT have a problem with the custodial parents. MY beef IS with the CSED agencies and the courts who “make this stuff up” (yes, I know, but that IS how it does seem sometimes).
However, if that’s all that the NC parent could afford. I mean, someone else above stated their ex earned $1000 per month. And had to pay 25% of that. HOLY COW! So the NC is living on $750 bucks per month? Okay, I admit my ignorance in this area, I don’t live in the states and never have as an adult, but here $750 bucks is where low, LOW rent ghetto apartments START, how does the guy eat? Pay for a vehicle? How does he buy gas with which to visit his kids? Get them an ice cream cone when he IS able to visit them?
So, the people like that end up working 2 or 3 jobs. So now he can at least pay rent AND eat, but at the cost of time and energy with which to have a relationship with his children, or even do more than merely exist really.
If two parents in one household were at one point contributing a certain amount, lets say 200 (I beg mercy due to my pathetic math skills :D). Then after they get divorced, the courts come up and say "okay, now NC has to pay not only what it would have taken the two of you to pay for BEFORE the divorce, but he has to pay more.
Then that just strikes me as UNfair, and UNethical, (and again, I’m considering myself VERY lucky my ex and I have a decent and equitable agreement).
While I agree that the non-CS shouldn’t be bankrupted in order to pay child support, it also becomes less of a problem as the income goes up. It might be impossible to live in Minnesota on $750 per month - I don’t know what rents are like there. But a person who makes $100,000 a year net also pays 25% in child support and that person clearly will not have trouble paying rent with the $75,000 left over.
And I also want to point out the unfairness of the flat rate sort of method- say we use CanvasShoes’ number of $200 per month. That’s $100 a month per parent. If the custodial parent earns the same net as the NCP (say they each have a $2000/month net income), that means the CP has slightly more money to use to support two people than the NCP has to support one. It’s pretty obvious to which household is bearing most of the financial burden of the divorce in that case.
At least in Wisconsin there is a bottom bellow which the court will not take the percentage. Actually in Wisconsin the percentage is not 25% for one child it is 17%. (Or at least it was 10 years ago when my daughter’s was awarded) Below a certain amount they order one flat fee which may have changed since then but in our case it was 125$ per month. The assumption is that even if the guy is poor he should be contribitiong something to the welfare of his children. I think that is right.
Ten years ago the child care bill for a toddler at a reputable, but by no means top of the line day care was 130$ per week. In a different city I was able to find a lovely woman in a licenced day care for 70$ a week. (Still just over double the allotment and we still have food clothes healthcare insurance utilities rent etc) She got lead poisoning from that house. It was caught in time and I don’t think there is any permenant damage but I still blame her father for that. ( He wasn’t actually paying the child care at the time.)
I have a child with my first wife. We divorced years ago and I have full and complete custory of the child (at the time of the divorce, my ex wife was a little fucked up and not in the right mind to care for a child).
She lives in Washington, I now live in Oregon.
At some point she decided to go into the welfare office and try to collect money. She claimed she had the child. They didn’t ask me if I had the child. Didn’t even ask her for proof of having the child in her home (although I suppose she had to show the birth records or something). She signed a few papers and they went after my paycheck. Simple as that.
They dinged me for years of back child support they said I owed.
After months and months of calling and writing I got a court date. During this time they kept my tax return and continued to deduct from my paychecks. In court they decided something was wrong and said I only owed the back support,. no current monthly. The money I paid covered most of the back support. I couldn’t afford a lawyer to fight it (because they had half of it AND I still had a family to feed) so I just wrote off the money and took their offer.
This was a few years back.
6 months ago I got a letter from support saying I owe them again. They currently have begun taking 50% of my paycheck. So, now I have to go BACK to court and fight this another time.
Here’s the best part. When I got the divorce I told my lawyer if I get full custody of the child then I don’t want any money from my ex for child support. It didn’t seem fair to me. If she’s not going to play a part in the childs life, then why should she pay any money for the care. I figured if she cleaned up her act and wanted to get involved, like visits on the weekends, we would ammend the custody papers and she could start paying support at that time.
Logical and fair if you ask me.
Well,. I got full custody and have never received a dime of child support from her. But I’ve paid HER child support to the tune of several thousand dollars.
I’m a dead-beat dad with full custody of my child.
Ouch Seven, thats not cool.
Sounds like fraud, IMHO. You might have to get a lawyer (in fact, you should get a lawyer), but you should go after her and file fraud charges, if the state hasn’t done so already. Find a lawyer who will be willing to work out a payment schedule with you (for you to pay his fees, not for your payments to the ex-wife). They’re out there.
You should not be paying her anything. You should be able to get your money back, and your ex should be charged with fraud.
Man, Seven. That’s just fucked up. The government can be so ignorant and stupid sometimes.
I never went after my ex for child support. He paid me for about 6 months at $200 a month. Then he quit paying. I told him if he didn’t pay child support, he couldn’t see his son. He never fought me on any front. Then he disappeared, and I figured good riddance. (I have since found out that he has done jail time for dealing. It is just as well my son never knew him.) He owes me about $35, 000 in back support. We survived just fine without it.
In support of Seven (I feel for you Im in the exact same boat).
I’m in California, they also made ZERO effort to establish if my kids mother had the kids. They’ve intercepted all three of my last three tax returns. That’s after…
She had the kids a total of 9 months after our divorce.
C/S hit me immediately with $3500.00 in back support.
Took more than three trips to see a judge to get full custody (one after each trip(3) she took to jail.
The oldest isn’t mine biologically, the court won’t make her turn over the name of the donor.
Since I’ve had custody, how much support do you think I got? That would be ZERO.
She then (back in January) applied and received welfare for the kids (still in my custody). I found out when they called here looking to garnish my wages. I now keep the card of a welfare fraud investigator in my wallet.
Wang-Ka
Why is it any easier to give a percentage than a dollar amount?
You can live wherever you want. You just can’t demand that your ex-spouse pay for you to do so.
Manda Jo
Then why does the custodial parent need child support.
doreen
So the only reason you’re paying to support your children is because you’re married to their father, and if he ever divorces you, it would take a court order for you to continue doing so? Surely that’s not what you’re saying. Child support laws increase, not decrease, the obligation that parents have. Right now, you don’t have to support your child any more than is necessary to keep them in reasonably good health.
Your reasoning is absurd. You say that the flat rate is unfair, and as evidence you purposely choose an unfair flat rate amount.
I really can’t see the logic behind percentage based child support. I mean, this child support. As in, the money it takes to support a child. That doesn’t change depending on how much money you make. If you go from making $100k to $50k, will your kids suddenly need half the stuff they did before? The attitude seems to be that any person who doesn’t have custody of their kids is obligated to tithe (and tithe and tithe again) their income. If a married couple were contacted by the government and told that they are currently spending 10% of their income on the kids, and that’s simply unacceptable, wouldn’t that be considered absurd?
I’m not saying it would take a child support order for me to support my children in as close to a manner as they’re used to as possible. But there are clearly people who won’t contribute a penny more than is ordered. Hell, I know someone who doesn’t pay the $50 a month he was ordered to unless his wages are attached.
A child support order of $100/month is *always * absurd? Even if the NCP nets only $500/month? I don’t think so. And a flat rate is going to have to be set low enough that it is not absurd to expect a low-income person to pay it. There are people who are supporting children on $200/ month or less, so why is that number unfair? It is unfair precisely because most people wouldn’t spend that little on a child unless they simply had no more to spend. You don’t like $100/ month as a flat rate payment? Fine, pick another one. One that is fair both to the NCP who nets $500/mo and to Bill Gates’ kids.
If you’re talking about minimal support, (rice and beans, clothes from Goodwill and barely habitable housing) $200 a month would probably do it. The real question is what level of support should the child receive.
It seems to me that most people who wouldn’t contribute more than is ordered wouldn’t be very good providers while married, either. But anyway, your whole question of whether a child should lose support because of a divorce isn’t the issue. The government shouldn’t be in the business of making sure that the world fulfills our ideas of what should be, but should confine itself to making sure that people fulfill their obligations. And besides, how is a child not getting a new pony each year because the dad is angry with the mom any less fair than a child not getting new clothes because the parents can’t afford it? Really, if you’re concerned about fairness, isn’t it more fair that the dad pay 30% or whatever it is of his income to a poor child rather than his own, since that child needs it more? Why does the child with a rich father deserve $3000 a month, but the one with a poor child deserves $100?
No, I didn’t say that. I said that you chose $100 as an absurd amount (ie, you wanted the flat rate to be absurd so you could criticize it, so you choose an amount you considered to be absurd).
You apparently missed CanvasShoes’ explanation of the flat rate
The flat rate would be what it takes to provide a child everything is justified in asking for from his parents. It would include rent, food, clothing, transportation, and entertainment. It would not include extravagent luxuries. The actual support payment would be calculated be taking into account both the flat rate and ability to pay. Consider the charge of child neglect. The amount that we expect a father to spend on his child depends on his income. If a poor father is letting his child go around in rags and feeding him gruel, that’s not neglect. But if a rich father is doing the same, there would be a legitimate charge to make. But there is a maximum level of care that is expected. Someone making $1M is year isn’t going to be charge with neglect because he’s “only” spending 2% of his income of his kid. Why should his obligation increase simply because he’s noncustodial? The amount of child support required should be the amount that it takes to provide the child with a level of care that does not constitute neglect.
On the rate issues…
The law of intact marriages is such that the parents can spend any percentage of their income on their children as they wish, so long as it meets their bare minimums. The example I like to use is the Huxtables. Claire and Cliff, despite being a lawyer and doctor respectively, preferred their children to get jobs, learn a solid work ethic, and buy their own cars, trendy clothes, etc. While they were certainly helping out with Sondra and Denise’s (and later Theo’s) college bills, they were probably spending less on their kids then they might have. But this was their prerogative.
Yet, had they gotten divorced, Cliff would have been paying enough in child support that if it were all spent on the kids it would be enough to buy Theo that nice sportscar he wanted. There has to be a line between having more well-to-do noncustodial parents help out by providing for nicer clothing and fees for sports teams and so forth on one hand, and having support orders that are sufficient to lavish the kids with new BMW’s and a full wardrobe from Saks. It may not be noticeable at the lower-to-middle income levels, but when income gets into the 6 figures it starts to be a little silly to stick to a percentage rate. Surely Bill Gates (mega-billionaire) could give his children a ridiculously lavish lifestyle at a mere 1% of his income, your average CEO of a midlevel corporation perhaps at 5%, an upper management type at 10%, and so forth.
I would propose some sort of cap that accomodated the benefits of a reasonably higher standard of living but stopped short of unreasonable excess.
As for the vasectomy, condom, sperm bank issue mentioned on the first page…
I’m not sexually active, but if I were, I’d follow the Tom Leykis rule. Never trust anyone with your sperm unless you’re willing to be a support-slave for the next 21 years of your life. (You ladies have a way to avert that disaster if you choose to take it, but otherwise there’s a corollary for you all too.) Aside from the tens of thousands of dollars in costs you’ll incur from the simple act of squirting the little sperm squigglers out, there’s enough vitriol and hatred between custodial and noncustodial parents in this world to make anyone’s life forever miserable (my pal is a support enforcement officer for DFS here in MO, I hear the stories.) Heck, the stories just in this thread are nightmarish enough to justify a vasectomy.
Reading this thread makes me want to destroy every one of my sperm, or at the least remain celibate for life. I see no way that anyone who reads this thread could have sex without extreme precautions in the future.
Doesn’t much matter which rate I pick. $500/month would be an absurd amount to expect from someone who earns minimum wage. If income level is not accounted for in some manner, any flat rate wil be absurd at some point
I don’t have a problem if there is a upper limit to the income that the percentage is automatically applied to. For example, in NY for an income of over $80,000 the percentage method does not have to be used and other factors can be considered. But that’s not the same as setting a flat rate just high enough to provide half of a non-neglectful lifestyle.
You know, I am in school right now, prelaw, And before this thread I wanted to go family law. But I can’t deal with some of the stories in this thread, How am I going to be a family lawyer in the future if I am a mess now listening to child support stories? I have since read forums and learned all sorts of info about child support and visitation, but also all the horror stories. Is it really this bad?
My boss is currently going through a divorce. It’s very amicable; he and his wife are definitely making the effort to make this divorce as easy as possible for both themselves and their child. They want joint custody of their son, and she’s said she doesn’t want child support (she comes from money, herself, and has a good job). Despite the fact that it’s a divorce, everything’s going swimmingly.
Until the lawyer became involved.
Her parents hired her a lawyer. This lawyer insists that the local Child Support Agency insists on my boss paying child suport, at 20% of his income, and that the payments have to be automatically deducted from his paychecks. Apparently, it’s just the way things are done.
Oh, and he wanted her to file a restraining order against my boss. Not that my boss has done anything to incur such an order- no, it’s just standard divorce negotiations. Apparently, my boss is supposed to be the “legal adversary” from this point on, according to the lawyer.
So now, my boss and his wife are doing their filing over the Internet, sans lawyer.
Child support, and divorce in general, are both fucked up.
Y’all should check out Pace Group.
Fathers with joint custody pay 90.2% of all child support ordered. Those with visitation rights pay 79.1%. Those with no access/visitation pay only 44.5%
Source: Census Bureau report. Series P-23, No. 173
Almost half of all mothers see no value in the father’s continued contact with his children following separation or divorce. And approximately 40% of divorced mothers report interfering with the father’s relationship with the children.
**Source: Sanford Braver, Arizona State University **
66% of all support not paid by non-custodial fathers is due to inability to pay.
Source: U.S. General Accounting Office Report, GAO/HRD-92-39FS, January 1992
Custodial mothers who receive a support award: 79.6%
Custodial fathers who receive a support award: 29.9%
Non-custodial mothers who totally default on support: 46.9%
Non-custodial fathers who totally default on support: 26.9%
(Data obtained by asking custodial parents)
Non-custodial mothers who pay support at any level: 20.0%
Non-custodial fathers who pay support at any level: 61.0%
(Data obtained by asking custodial parents)
All the following are for custodial parents:
Single mothers who work less than full time: 66.2%
Single fathers who work less than full time: 10.2%
Single mothers who work more than 44 hours per week: 7.0%
Single fathers who work more than 44 hours per week: 24.5%
Single mothers who receive public assistance: 46.2%
Single fathers who receive public assistance: 20.8%
Source: Technical Analysis Paper No. 42, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Income Security Policy, Oct., 1991 Authors: Meyer and Garansky