Can courts dictate how much money parents spend on their kids?

Great Debates
1

The recent thread about child support reminded me about a question I’ve had for a while. It seems that, when a couple gets divorced, the court has the legal authority to tell the parents exactly how much they need to pay for child support every month.

But, while married, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a court dictating how much money the parents have to spend on their kids each month.

So, my questions are:

  • Have courts ever ordered a married couple to spend a certain amount of money on their kids each month?

  • If the answer to the above is no, from where does the court derive legal authority to do so when the couple is no longer together?

I guess it’s similar to the fact that, when married, the courts can’t tell you how much money you have to spend on your spouse, but once divorced, they give you a precise dollar amount to spend each month. You can be the stingiest son of a bitch or stingiest bitch in the world and spend almost nothing on your spouse while married and (I don’t think) the courts can tell you a thing. Get divorced, and suddenly the courts have the authority to tell you how much to spend on your former spouse.

I can see the practical reasons behind this, but it does seem bizarre, and I’m curious as to the legal justification for the court’s stance in the two cases (pre and post divorce)

2

In Colorado, there’s a place in the divorce decree, right along with child support, about which parent will pay for the kid’s college education. It could be both of them.

Stay married, and you aren’t obligated to pay for your kid’s college education.

You do have to support your kids, but there’s nobody saying, for instance, that you have to give them their own room, etc. If you starve them or send them off to school in clothes that don’t protect them from the weather, the school will report them to the child protective service. Obviously there’s a minimum expectation there.

3

You misunderstand. An order to F to pay $X per month to M by way of child support does not compel M to spend $X each month on the children. One of the considerations which goes into making the order is the expectation that, on the whole M is likely to spend more than $X per month on the children, but the order doesn’t compel her to do that.

F can resist the order by arguing that $X is an unreasonable amount to pay by way of child support, and in in fact he can show that the kids are being maintained in a fully acceptable style for considerably less that that, it may help his argument.

If, on the other hand, F feels that despite his payment of $X per month the kids are being materially neglected by M, his proper response is not to seek a reduction in his child support payments, but to seek custody of the kids so that he can ensure that they will be properly maintained.

4

All of the legal child support agreements I know of specify an amount or a percentage of income for one spouse to pay to the other for child support. I am not personally aware of any that specify how the money is to be spent. My own sister got pretty hefty child support from her ex, and AFAIK hardly spent a dime of it directly on them. Well, they didn’t go naked or hungry, but most of it went to paying her mortgage and for her constant home redecorating projects.

OTOH, keeping a roof over their heads and a pleasant home environment is certainly contributing something to her kids’ welfare.

If the court orders the parent to spend X dollars on food, Y dollars on clothing, Z dollars on music lessons, etc., and after that the mortgage can’t be paid, the court has gone too far down the line in micromanaging, IMO. I have heard of such orders being made in the case of very wealthy parents, where making basic ends meet isn’t an issue, but most people have to worry about home, car and other big ticket items, and really can’t afford to be held to really restrictive conditions.

5

Is it up to the ex parent to pay the mortgage for the nonfamily? I can see making the child support actually like you know, go for the childs needs. and perhaps a portion of the mortgate [sort of like if you have a home office, the % of space taken up by the home office can be used as a business expense tax deduction]
I thought the mortgage payments were to be from the alimony, that support of the ex wife until she remarries…and then after the remarriage, ex hubby was off the hook for her living arrangements [and only on hook for support for the kid]

6

Wow. That’s bullshit. Since when do I owe my kids anything after they are legal adults?

What if it’s a very poor family?

7

I think the thread the OP references may have been about this. I don’t have a link though.

While the family is whole, a parent is not required to provide toys to a child, spending money for a spouse, or tuition for adult offspring. However, these are all provided in a typical family, and the courts attempt to create some semblance of that.

As for poor families, they typically already save a higher percentage of their income for college than wealthier families. My conjecture is that they’re more aware that this is a path up and out for their family.

8

This is where I think a lot of the resentment comes from with those paying child support. They pay some large-ish amount (usually based on a mathematical formula), and somehow think that it goes 100% to the kids.

But in a three person house, (say, mom, new dad/boyfriend, kid) that kid accounts for 1/3 of the mortgage, utility bills, water, garbage, etc. So it never goes as far as the ex thinks it will.

I have never, ever known anyone on either side who is satisfied with their support arrangement. Either “the bitch” is spending it on herself and the new boyfriend, or “that asshole” barely pays enough to get by. It’s a mess, made far more complicated by the emotional weather of the parents.

9

I’d have to see a cite for that before I believe it.

10

I can promise you that it’s the case in New York State that the court can order payments of college tuition (under penalty of garnishing paychecks, income tax refunds, etc.), even for children over 18, even if it’s for an expensive private college, and even if the payer of child support works for a different private university than the child('s mother) chooses, where the tuition is virtually free. Been there, done that. Not a flexible or pretty picture. (Of course the court could decline to exercise this option, too, but it’s there within the court’s discretion.)

11

Can we get back to the questions in the OP?

  • Have courts ever ordered a married couple to spend a certain amount of money on their kids each month?

  • If the answer to the above is no, from where does the court derive legal authority to do so when the couple is no longer together?

12

I think the 3rd post in this thread answered your question.

But think of it this way… If you neglect your child to the point where you don’t provide him with adequate food, shelter, clothing, schooling, and other necessities, the state can punish you. It amounts to the same thing.

However, the state assumes that as long as the family is intact, support will generally be there and only acts on evidence that such support isn’t there. Once the family is no longer intact, that assumption is no longer valid.

13

Wouldn’t “money spent on the kids” have to be carefully defined first? That sounds very hard to do.

It’s easy to order and later count the amount of money in a transfer from the custody of one adult to another (i.e., a child support payment). Such precise accounting of spending internal to a household is more difficult to monitor, but probably still possible - the hard part is figuring out just what the hell one is trying to count.

The court could in principle order the custodial parent to account for literally every dollar spent. Suppose the custodial parent did this; then what? Does the court regard some fraction of the money spent on the electric bill as “money spent on the child”? The grocery bill? The mortgage? If so, what fraction?

If the court intends to determine objectively that the custodial parent did or did not comply with an order to spend $X on the child, details like those cannot be left vague. I can see why they are generally reluctant to step into that hornet’s nest.

14

Let’s take a case involving big money.
Why do big money children and spouses (in the case of alimony) get more money? If the state was trying to provide a necessary means to shelter, clothing, and food wouldn’t that number be pretty damn flat across the board?

15

To be perfectly honest, given how damned adversarial many divorces seem to end up, personally if I was the Family Court Judge in charge, I think I would make them lay out by percentage the money that is to go into paying for housing, clothing, food and whatnot. And I would actually bring it up for review periodically as well. Not to mention, I think I would actually periodically have a family services type inspection periodically, with an interview of the kids if there was any request for modification just to avoid an issue like the kids being used as maid service by the step mom as a reason why they don’t want to go visit dad any longer.

I also think that the laws regarding child support and alimony should go for all 50 states, not the patchwork that is now.

16

The whole idea of divorced parents paying for a child’s education came about like this:

The courts have viewed a family is the most stable unit for raising a child that will be a productive memeber of society. Nations need population increases to sustain their economies and keep the country productive.

A child with two parents is more likely to have a stable background and not become a public charge. That is he will GIVE to society not take from it. Taking could mean welfare or just turning to a life of crime.

In additon if you have a family a child once grown, will have someone to fall back on. Indeed an adult child is more likely to be able to move back in with his parents rather than be homeless or on welfare, which doesn’t help the society as a whole.

That’s the theory anyway, feel free to disagree but that is the viewpoint of the courts historically

So when a divorce happens the courts feel the parents are placing the child as at a disadvantage over a child who has married parents. Historically this has been correct, though probably not since the 80s.

So the courts felt since children of divorced parents are at a disadvantage, a college education would give them an additonal “leg up” so to speak. This “leg up” of a college education would offset the disadvantage of having divorced parents.

That’s how the court rulings on this came about. You can argue the points back and forth of whether or not it applies today, though in the past it probably did.

Often courts are slow to catch up with society’s changes, such as establishing parenthood, which is easy now, but some states still have outdated and enforced laws.

As for the amount of money, courts rule that a child has a “lifestyle” that has to be maintained. The courts try to look at the lifestyle of the average life of the child.

Thus if your very wealthy, the court sees no reason why the child should be demoted to “middle class” because of a divorce. The courts says basically if a child would’ve continued to live a wealthy lifestyle without a divorce than it should live one WITH a divorce.

Even thought a middle class life is perfectly fine. The courts always try to side with the child over either parent.

Right or wrong, that’s for debate but that’s how it is.

17

To answer Polerius’s original posting:

  1. absent a child welfare case (abuse, neglect, etc.), all custodial parents, married or unmarried, are presumed by the law to properly care for their children.

  2. in a dissolution of marriage, the court isn’t ordering “the parents” to spend a certain amount on the child(ren), it’s ordering the noncustodial parent to pay or contribute a certain amount to the custodial parent’s raising of the child, who as the child of both parents is the legal responsibility of both parents even if only one parent has custody.

  3. As to the court or State’s authority, a dissolution case is before a court because at least one of the spouses filed the case and thus asked the court for the State’s assistance in dividing property, deciding custody, etc. The couple wasn’t dragged into court by the Marriage Police. :rolleyes:

  4. Without looking at a particular State’s laws, I could easily imagine a court order that a married couple spend a certain amount on their child if:
    (a) they ended up as the subject of a child welfare case, and
    (b) the court declared the child a ward of the State, but
    © the child welfare authorities and/or the court saw enough potential for reform in the parents that the court left physical custody of the child with the parents but with ongoing supervision by the court through the child welfare authorities.

18

My divorce agreement from PA includes this.

19

I repeat; the court typically does not order the divorced couple, or either of them, to spend any specific amount on the kids.

Having said that, the court typically does have authority to do so (depending, obviously, on the jurisdiction and the law in that jurisdiction). They get that authority from the legislature, which commonly enacts a family code giving the court sweeping powers to make orders regarding assets and income on divorce. The legislation typically includes power to order the spouses to make payments to third parties, rather than to each other, though normally only the latter power is exercised. But the court could order the father (say) to pay the school or college fees of the children - that would be a payment to a third party for the benefit of the child.

20

I don’t know, but they absolutely have the authority to do it. If there are allegations of child neglect, a family court could require a certain amount be spent as a condition for not removing the child.