Are you unclear about the meaning of “custodial?” It relates to making decisions.
But here’s the problem with your argument: there’s no law that mandates that parents have to equally share all responsibility with regards to raising the child even if they disagree. For example, suppose the dad makes all the money. He gives the kid and the mom an allowance. She has little money of her own. If she wants to send her kid to an expensive private school and he doesn’t, then she’s out of luck. If she wants to buy the kid a car when he turns 16 but he doesn’t, they can’t.
No law says marriages have to be equal and more importantly, no enforcement of that inequality is possible on the part of the courts. There are martial rights that both spouses have, but outside of that, both parents can spoil or deny their kid through whatever power they have by themselves. Why should that not be so when a marriage is over?
I don’t think I’m defaulting to the decision of one parent. I’m saying that the parent with custody can spoil the kid however they want, and the parent without custody can do the same. If one does not have the ability to do so, then it is no different from their abilities while in a marriage.
I said that because some people seem to think that whatever lifestyle the child is used to should be preserved to be fair to the child. I re-read what you wrote and realize that doesn’t exactly reply to what you wrote, so consider this a general venting of a topic others have brought up. I’m saying that it is no great tragedy if a rich child is taken out of his mansion and placed in a single room apartment with his poor father due to a divorce. There is no requirement to preserve that child’s lifestyle. Circumstances change and its more fair for him to adjust than for a court to punish the other parent
Why do you feel that courts have to make the parents agree? Why can’t parents disagree? Why can’t the rich parent decide he doesn’t want the kid to live richly in opposition of the other parent? In a marriage, courts don’t force parents to agree, why should it be different in a divorce?
Do you agree that $16000 a month is too much? Can there be a maximum amount of child support? Or is only the net worth of the non-custodial parent the limit? By my plan, using a formula tied to the cost of raising a child and cost of living for the area of residence IS erring on the side of abundance because I consider the other alternative to be no payments at all.
And how about taking into account the wealth of the custodial parent too? In the example case I posted, Gabriel Aubry is worth $4.5 million. In this case, I have no problems if Halle Berry pays no child support because the kid is still living in abundance by all definition. Can you agree to that?
To put it another way, do you think that legally the courts should require the non-custodial parent to have contact with the child other than payment no matter what? Force her to take the kid every weekend, force them to go to recitals and school plays? What is the limit on that?
What is your limit on forcing a parent to be a part of the kid’s life if she doesn’t want to be?
No, I’m suggesting that we ignore what we think is feasible and debate what’s right. Lawyers are not part of this conversation, only the fairness in determining child support amounts
Because its an interesting topic to talk about with a lot of emotion-driven arguments on each side that lacks a logical basis?
In Malthus’ scenario, the father is contesting custody. That being the case, almost every fact relevant to that question is unknown in the scenario. If in this example the mother of the child is genuinely only out to make some cash, and the father really wants a kid and really wants to take care of the kid, and that’s all we have to go on, then a court would clearly have to determine that it was in the best interests of the child to be with dad. There would be essentially no basis in law for any other determination, since a custody order in every jurisdiction I know anything about requires explicit consideration of a certain number of factors. None of which are “this one’s the ma.”
What I am asking you and ITR is what you are basing this idea – that in that scenario, the deck is stacked against the father – on.
Just want to say I think Halle Berry’s $16,000. per month payment is much lower than I would expect it to be. Spousal support and child support are calculated by using a formula, aren’t they?
It seems that both father’s and mother’s income and net worth may have been taken into account, as well as their joint custody. I would have expected the amount to be about double.
Private school in Los Angeles can be $30000- or more per year, for certain elementary schools plus additional fees and donations to the school during the year. Kids have tablets or notebooks, phones, and other tech stuff. Add hair appointments, wardrobe, transportation, nannies, security, etc. and the total in the op from birth-18 years old becomes meaningless.
I wonder how $16,000/mo in this case compares, hardship-wise, to the average payment by the average noncustodial parent. Sounds like peanuts to me.
No, joint custody doesn’t have anything to do with support orders.
Joint physical custody means the kid lives with both parents under some shared arrangement, with neither parent having “primary” custody–something like a 50/50 split on time.
Far more common is joint legal custody, where both parents have equal say in the major decisions concerning the kid: which school, which doctor, which church, etc. Typically, one parent still has primary physical custody (that’s where the kid lives during the school week) and the other parent has Junior on some more-or-less regular schedule.
Sole legal custody, by contrast, means the parent who has it has sole decision-making authority. The noncustodial parent may or may not have visitation (the right to see and spend time with Junior), but has no voice in any decisions concerning the child’s residence, schooling, health care, and so on.
Where physical custody is split 50/50, the parents may agree (or the judge may decide) that the costs are already split 50/50 and so no support order is necessary, but one may be issued anyway if one parent’s circumstances are substantially different from the other’s.
If the parents have joint legal custody, it typically means that they are able to agree on the major decisions between themselves, so a judge doesn’t need to make those decisions for the parents. That does not usually affect whether child support is necessary, however.
Here are stats on child support in the US for 2010:
The court won’t be able to determine that the mother is a gold-digger, and even if it does, the fact that she’s a gold-digger doesn’t mean she doesn’t also love the kid.
As a practical matter, most men are not as well situated to take care of children as women, since society has decreed breadwinning to be their primary function. And this is probably especially true of very wealthy people, who tend to make their money via schedules that don’t leave a lot of flexibility for hands on child-raising. So the mother is generally going to be favored.
Add to that some residual “tender years” mindsets and all purpose stereotyping, and very very few fathers are going to win custody. Them’s the facts, in the real world, regardless of what you can read about in the lawbooks.
[I’m aware of stats showing that fathers who contest custody win it in a respectable percentage of cases. But this is a self-selected group of fathers who assess they have a real chance of winning custody to begin with. Most know it’s either not compatible with their financial obligations or hopeless to try to begin with.]
In a marriage, either the two reach some agreement or the marriage dissolves (or becomes not a marriage but a master/slave or master/servant relationship). Marriage is a partnership; neither party gets to ride roughshod over the other.
Since when is taking care of your child considered punishment?
For example, if one parent decides unilaterally that the child needs to live a simple life and therefore that parent will not be providing any child support at all, is it “punishment” to make him/her/it pay a reasonable percentage of their income?
Why should Halle Berry be able to ignore the financial aspects of supporting her child merely because the other parent has money?
Child support orders do typically take into account the income and resources of both parents; what makes you believe that did not happen here?
Payment isn’t the same thing as contact, and one doesn’t depend on the other, so what’s the intent of this question?
Look at it this way: what if NEITHER parent wants custody, and NEITHER parent wants to take care of the kid on the weekend? Somebody has to, though, and if neither parent is willing, the state or another third-party will step in, AND whoever has custody will bill the parents for the work. In my state, Child Services will vigorously pursue both parents for payments on children in foster care. You don’t want to take care of your kid(s)? Too bad, so sad, pay up, and you may well end up in jail for neglect or abandonment too.
OK. Fair enough. I think these are your beliefs, but I don’t think you have anything to support them. And as I mentioned, I disagree with them based on “the facts, in the real world.”
So as you admit, the facts don’t back you up. As the actual facts make clear, joint custody is the default in most states, and men can and do win joint custody on a regular basis. Men are just as capable as women to take an active role in child are, and are just as. Stable of making the difficult trade-offs between family and career.
Your arguments made sense 20 years ago. But now, it’s nothing more than a disingenuous apology for people who abandon their families and want to get rid of the last shred of responsibility for their own kids.
This, this, and also this.
And also, with all respect to you, Yog, who the fuck cares if two overpriced lawyers and a judge decide one obscenely wealthy parent has to pay an obscene amount to another obscenely wealthy parent?
I’m just honestly not seeing how this applies to child support for the vast majority of parents, which is, as Yllaria adroitly observes, is typically based on the relative incomes of the parents.
Hypothetical - A couple are raising two children. They eventually decide that the children are too pampered and spoiled, and agree to drastically cut back on toys, fancy family vacations, trips to restaurants and movie theatres, etc. They both agree that a more spartan lifestyle builds character.
Question - Should the force of law be brought about to restore the children to their previous lifestyle? If children have a legal right to continue (or if the parents have a legal obligation to continue providing) a particular level of lifestyle, then a court would be justified in ordering the parents to return to their previous amounts of spending on toys, dining, movies, and so forth.
If there is no such right or obligation, then why would there be in the case where the parents are divorced? Is it just because in that case the parents may disagree about the lifestyle to provide the children? If the parents stay married but disagree, would a court be justified in ordering the parent who prefers a less lavish upbringing to pay more than she or he currently does?
Is it out of the question that the opportunity remain the same?
The law holds, and rightly IMHO, that spouses in a functioning marriage are presumed to have figured out a process of mutual decision-making that works for them both, and thus the law needs to keep its beaky nose out of that private matrimonial agreement.
The law also holds, and rightly IMHO, that when two divorcing parents manage to work out mutually satisfactory arrangements in an uncontested divorce, it doesn’t need to second-guess their decisions.
But when divorcing parents are actually SUING each other over their disputes concerning custody, child support, etc., that’s when everybody’s favorite umpire Lex Civilis has to get involved.
Nobody’s telling divorcing couples that the law gets to push them around just because they’re divorcing. The law gets to push them around because one or both of them can’t manage to get their sorry quarrelsome asses on board with even the most fundamental collaborations of shared parenthood, and are yelling for the ref to sort things out instead.
See above. The law presumes that married parents can be trusted to make their own mutually approved unsupervised decisions about childrearing, and that divorcing parents who are suing each other over it cannot.
The frugal married parent can only force that lifestyle on the kid if the other parent agrees. Even if the other parent would prefer not to agree, staying in the marriage is a form of agreement.
But even so, I would have no problem in allowing a divorced millionaire to force his or her children to take the bus , share a bedroom, etc under one condition. And that is if the millionaire is truly frugal ,not just cheap or vindictive. What's the difference?
A frugal millionaire would have been living that lifestyle along with the rest of the family during the marriage, and would continue living that lifestyle after the divorce, along with any subsequent children from a new marriage. It can almost happen- Warren Buffet has apparently always lived a lifestyle that was upper-middle class at best.His kids probably didn't share bedrooms or get clothes from Goodwill, but neither did they live in a mansion or have expensive cars.
A cheap or vindictive millionaire , on the other hand, would be like a lot of divorced men I know. The kids who live with them get their own bedrooms, in-ground pools, vacations to Disney, go to summer camp, get a car as a HS graduation gift etc. Whichever luxuries the family budget can afford. Suddenly, there’s a divorce and the ex only needs a one bedroom apartment with two kids- after all they can share and she can sleep on the couch.If she wants a two or three bedroom, that’s on her. Sports, summer camp and vacations are luxuries not necessities and why should he have to pay for that. If she wants the kid to go to camp, let her pay for it. And it’s not that these men can’t afford it or are opposed to the luxuries - because when they have kids with the second wife, those kids have all the luxuries that the original kids had until the divorce. I’m never quite sure if it’s that they hate their ex-wives, or if they only spend money on the kids living with them because they’d be embarrassed to have neighbors see them indulging themselves but not the kids, or if they don’t want to eat steak at the same table where they’re feeding their children hamburger* but have no problem eating steak while the children are eating hamburger out of sight. But it is certainly not that they are frugal by nature.
- I actually heard of a family that did this with foster children. Everyone who heard it was appalled-even the men who treat their children differently depending on whether they live in the man’s household.
No, I don’t admit that the facts don’t back me up, and I’ve not said anything that might indicate an admission that the facts don’t back me up.
Why would you say something so blatantly untrue?
Woah. There is I think a fundamental disconnect in philosophies here between you and I.
I most certainly do not think that a parent ought to simply “ignore” their children - insofar as the law is concerned. Sure, you can’t police people’s emotions, but having children legally entails duties towards them. It also does so morally, in my opinion, so the law and morality are aligned on this.
How is ignoring one’s previous children and starting afresh not “abandoning parenthood”?
Depends on jurisdiction. Here in Canada, there may be a payment if the incomes of the two are different, but it will be considerably smaller than in a case of single custody.
The issue is control. If you lose custody, you lose control over making those decisions on behalf of your children. The reason? It is obvious to anyone seriously considering the matter that decisions have to be made all the time in raising a child - and subjecting these decisions to a continual contest between the custodial parent and the non-custodial parent, who have divorced and presumably no longer like each other, is a recepie for complete disaster.
If the two can usefully cooperate even after divorce, then the best solution is joint custody. When we are talking about sole custody, we are talking about when they cannot usefully cooperate, typically.
I did ask several times what you based your belief on. I think it’s fair to assume that if you had facts to back you up you’d have provided them by now. The only facts you made reference to were statistical data that belied your position.
Even if that were true - which it’s not - that would only imply that you can infer that the facts don’t back me up. It’s still not correct to state that I admit it.
But it’s also a false inference to begin with. Facts which back me up include an enormous amount of personal experience with numerous people who have gotten divorced and familiarity with their situations, and a lot of other facts that I’ve read over the years but don’t remember just off the top of my head and am not interested in digging up.
The reason I’m not interested in researching this further and getting into a fact-based debate about it is because I think my depiction of the situation is beyond obvious and that anyone who disputes it is either from another, ideology-based, planet and/or is not arguing in good faith.
You can make of that what you wish, but the statement that I myself admit that the facts don’t back me up is blatantly false.