Why not both?
If you can show that the other (receiving) parent is withholding resources from the child that the child should have they fall into the same category as the person who wishes to reduce CS payments to have the child fall to a lower economic status then the parent of means should be expected to have.
But that said it takes 2 to make a child, well cloning excepted, but anyway, and it is a interdependency and combination of the two in the creation and dependance of the child to the degree that the parents can provide, as such part of the child’s status, in the case here, would be the elevation of also the other parent by these means. How else would you expect this to go, the custodial parent living in a rent controlled slum lord apartment living in rags from the second hand store attached to a spectacular condo overlooking the ocean where the child lives.
You just can not separate one from the other, dong so does affect the child.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Time out!
Deprivation
Now that we’ve got that cleared up:
There is nothing about Halle Berry’s filing for reduction of child support payments that changes any of the arguments previously posted about how child support amounts should be determined.
Depravity: A evil or immoral act
AKA child abandonment, dissociation with his/her birthright, yes evil and immoral to the extreme.
Yes we cleared that up, exactly how I stated it, fhank you very much
Did you think it was going to be that easy? Teflon’s got nothing on kanicbird.
Personal insults are not allowed in this oh never mind.
If that is a personal insult, I apologize. I consider it a commentary on his reluctance to accept common definitions.
I understand this, and don’t consider it a personal insult as Czarcasm and I go back for quite some time.
It is not ‘reluctance to accept common definitions’ <sic>
But what that definition entails. This thread (generally) assumes money is the factor, I take it as the dissociation to the parent as the factor. So the common definition is upheld. The question is: Is the child deprived of money or birthright that is actually the depravity.
If we just consider a money value we should just have children support by the state regardless of the parents being together or not, maybe perhaps just for child custody cases, either way the rich would be still paying for a high share as they would need to support many children in need. So it is a Q. of if we want parents responsible for the children or the state.
- $3000 a month for child support is not a “depravity”. Period.
- There has to be a middle ground between “more money than you could possibly spend on a child’s needs” and “ward of the state”.
My point is the actual amount of money is immaterial, denial of the birthright is. The birthright will necessitate a certain amount of financial resources (due to the way our world works) in accordance to the parents ability to provide.
Perhaps you can expand on this.
Not until you explain this “birthright” that includes more money than could possibly be spent on a child. This money is for child support, not child and ex support. Explain to me a “birthright” to money that goes to someone other than the child.
I expressed how the child is a product of 2 people. That child will always be. I have expressed how you can’t just raise up the child (in terms of support from one parent) without raising up the custodial parent in the process, what would you have - a seat from a Lexus installed in a 15 yr old Chrysler for the child to sit upon? Your way just does not make any sense. In order for the child to have the status (in this case economic) of his/her parents, there has to be a level of that provided for the child, which includes the parents as part of the support structure.
Again it is not a ‘birthright to money’, it is a birthright that in our current society would necessitate and demand money.
Meh. She agreed to one amount, assuming that he’d be working. Now that he’s established a history of not working, she’s asking the court to look at it again. The court has not yet responded.
One thing that the court can do, according to the standard formulas, is to declare that a parent is “willfully underemployed.” At that point, the court can make its own estimate of what the un- or underemployed parent should be earning and use that in the formula. It bumps the total amound due to the child from both parents up, but assigns a larger amount to the un/under parent, thereby lowering the other parent’s share.
Another thing that the courts can do is fall back on the formula, even though Ms. Berry originally agreed to pay more. I suspect that their former combined incomes were indeed off the standard charts and that the amount was negotiated. $3,000/month may be the top of the standard formula. If so, it’s a very good place for her to start renegotiations.
Until the court case is complete, we have no idea whether they will lower her mandated amount or how far they will lower it. If she is successful in lowering it to $3,000, I will not cry. Especially if she is willing to buy other things (gifts, trips, school tuition) in a way that shows that she cares.
I forget how old the child is. If the child is very young, I wouldn’t cry if the amount wasn’t lowered, either. Or if it was lowered to something in between. Assuming it’s not a huge burden, of course. The amount can always be revisited next year.
You can be pretty sure that Daddy is going call his lawyer to respond and that, whatever else happens, the lawyers will come out of it well.
Here in South Carolina - where I have recently gone through this exact thing - it’s considered that children do indeed have a right to a certain percentage of a parent’s earnings. So the judge explained to us.
It factors both parents income, then factors the number of overnights the child has under each parent’s care, then spits out a figure. In my particular case because our income varies so much we recalculate it based on each year’s tax return.
Heck, here’s the calculator. Factors include
of children
Custody (shared overnights)
Monthly income
Monthly alimony
Other children in the home
Other child support/alimony
Additional expense per parent (health insurance, child care and so forth)
Very straightforward, but it is based on an expectation that the child has a claim on each parents income. I honestly can’t argue with it. I’m responsible for taking care of my children as they can’t take care of themselves. They had no choice in existing, so I’m on the hook for supporting them at a level that my income represents.
Let’s say $300 for an extra room, $75 for half the food, $200 for half the expenses (clothing, diapers, sports, whatever), and $200 for medical insurance and expenses.
Then there is the fact that a custodial parent is legally responsible for that child 24/7. A nanny around here goes for $20 an hour. The first eight hours are normal price, so $160 of which one parent picks up $80. After that it’s time and a half overtime, or $480, of which one parent picks up $240, so a total one-parent burden of $320 a day for the privledge of having someone else change the diapers, handle all the doctors visits, and otherwise endure 100% of the burden of and lifestyle changes stemming from taking care of a kid.
Adds up to $10,375 a month. Seems reasonable for expecting someone to do all your childcare while you do whatever the hell you want.
Just to address one part of the conversation: I spent a lot of time helping people fill out paperwork for divorce, paternity, and custody actions (these are people who are not represented by attorneys, generally) and most people were scrupulous about how they filled out the papers, divvying up the assets and the debts, figuring out the child custody and support, etc. Many people volunteered to take nothing, though we are in a community property state. Most of the people I saw wanted a clean break and a congenial split. Paternity actions were almost always because they were required because they were accepting TANF or the like.
I saw hundreds of people. I wasn’t just chatting with them or hearing some horror story where there was some social benefit to badmouthing their exes. I was helping with the actual paperwork that gets filed with the court. And in the vast majority of cases, people didn’t ask for everything they could get. I think the average was probably asking for less than half of what they could realistically get.
And given that the majority of people filing were not likely to get any sort of contest from their exes (uncontested divorces are the vast, vast, VAST majority), the effort to be diligent and not screw anyone over is especially noteworthy. (Not that they’d get everything they wanted if they tried to do an unfair split in an uncontested divorce, but most people don’t know that. They think that if it’s uncontested, they get whatever they want. And they still don’t try for everything they could get.)
We are generally talking about shared custody here though. The fact that the non paying parent gets to do whatever the hell they want a fair bit doesn’t seem to be in your calculations.
I think you are severely overestimating the cost of a raising a kid. The estimate of how much it takes to raise the average child is $241800 according to the USDA from the first post. Dividing that amount down to monthly payments is about $1100 per month.
What you failed to take into account is that kids don’t need their own room, nor expensive extra-curriculars, and there are plenty of times where the parent is not busy at work where they can watch the kid and should do it for free because they are the guardians. As for overtime, you’re essentially charging the parent for living. Babysitter charges should only apply when the parent is at work, they must take care of their kid for free at other times because its their kid.
According to your estimate, most kids except for the very rich are living in dire poverty and abusive situations. Do you really believe that or are you simply trying to prove a point? $10375 is $124000 a year. How many people make that much a year?
But you know what? You’re not going to back down on this, so here’s my response to your scenario: so what? The majority of humans do not make that much. If its abusive and terrible to give a kid less than they deserve according to your calculations, and taking into account that the vast majority of humans live like that, then I will say it is perfectly ok to be abusive to kids by shortchanging them their 10 grand a month. Kids do not deserve to be well-fed or well-cared-for because that would be too high a cost. Instead, all children should be forced to be abused to the tune of less than 10 grand a month for support. If they are starving still after spending that much on food, then let them starve. If they hurt themselves because they didn’t have someone to care for them, then let them hurt themselves. Its better for kids to suffer than to mandate that they have 10 grand a month to spend on expenses
It’s not abusive to raise a kid on less than 10k a month, because in most cases parents split the labor costs of raising a kid by dividing up the daily responsibilities. Nobody pays for the work because they share the work.
But if one partner is not going to uphold their half of the work (and take their share of missed opportunities, which can be huge…work, dating, travel) then why shouldn’t that labor be figured in to the costs?
Of course most people can’t actually pay for that labor. That’s why we have a “percent of the income” formula based on what they can reasonably pay.
I don’t think you can classify as “work” if one person of a couple is spending time with the kid. Presumably, that person is getting something out of it too. Taking your kid out to the park, staying at home watching TV with him, or just putting him to bed then going to sleep in another room is not work that anyone should be paid for.