BTW, Cesar Millan’s settlement has been described as just that , a settlement in every article I can find. That means it was not imposed on him against his will by a judge- he agreed to it. Maybe because he doesn’t believe his kids should have a lower standard of living just because their parents are divorced or maybe because there are issues/videos he doesn’t want his wife to reveal, but either way, he agreed to it.
This, my goodness.
All the gnashing of teeth about the poor, put upon wealthy parents, when chances are even after these supposedly exorbitant payments they will still have a much higher quality of life than anyone participating in this thread.
You understand that settlements are driven by what a court will ultimately find. He probably didn’t agree to in out of generosity. I’m sure his lawyer told him that if you go to court, the judge will likely award $X in child support. That has a bearing on the settlement.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to get at. Since a lot of people originally were saying that the children shouldn’t be affected by the divorce and need to live the same way. I was saying that no one is going to live the same way after a divorce.
I was also asking if it’s the case that the children should live the same way then, should the parent with custody get remarried and start to live an even better life then if they were to get divorced why shouldn’t the step parent have to pay as well.
I know my case may not be the norm around the country, but near me I see it. It’s happening to me. My ex is getting remarried in a couple of months. They are building a brand new $650k house. My oldest daughter is in gymnastics, which is expensive. Neither of these my ex and I could afford when we were married. My children will get used to living like that. Should my ex and her husband get divorced she will not be able to live like that so by the original logic the children shouldn’t be forced to live worse off.
Your wife certainly would not automatically get full custody.
20% of single parent households are headed by fathers. 1 in 6 custodial fathers has sole custody of their child. In the vast majority of cases, custody is worked out between the parents according their their preferences without the court being involved. In the relatively small number of cases where custody is determined by the state, each state has their own rules. California, for example, favors joint custody.
It’s not, unfortunately, a completely even playing ground (and that is a cause I’d gladly take up.) But in most cases where a father does not have joint or sole custody, it is because he did not want it, and in a smaller percentage it is because he did want it but was not the “primary caregiver.” The number of fathers who acted as primary caregivers and wanted custody but did not get it is going to be miniscule.
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You understand that settlements are driven by what a court will ultimately find. He probably didn’t agree to in out of generosity. I’m sure his lawyer told him that if you go to court, the judge will likely award $X in child support. That has a bearing on the settlement.
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He agreed to it in exchange for having his wife keep quiet about his sexual proclivities, the article says. Jesus, you’re going to this extent to argue about this trend you’re sure exists and you didn’t even bother reading about what happened?
I think you’ve articulated it perfectly well. The trouble I’m having is that what you’re saying seems wildly inaccurate where it makes factual claims and wildly implausible where it expresses an opinion. There is no static amount that represents the cost of keeping a child alive. Even if there were, it’s literally barbaric to suggest that this figure would represent a parent’s obligation to his child, and I have a hard time believing you really want to live in that society.
Every married parent has an ongoing obligation to his or her children that is incredibly context-specific. Every child has different needs and every parent has different abilities and opportunities to provide for those needs. It is absurd that you’re arguing that you are right now aware of a simple mathematical threshold that would obviate the need for any child support calculations, and that actually most people would agree with you that your way is more reasonable than taking the context into account. It’s great that we’re all free to be horrible parents if we want to, but the fact that parents are given the leeway to be very unreasonable toward their children before a divorce doesn’t mean the courts are required to be unreasonable once they’re involved.
What is your evidence that a number of children of divorced parents would end up with a more opulent lifestyle than what they has before the divorce? The idea is to keep them in the same style of living - same school, same activities, same level of comfort. Your entire argument is based on a hypothetical situation where married wealthy parents live frugally before the divorce, but then after the divorce suddenly it’s high times for the kids and ex-spouse who now have more luxuries than they ever dreamed of. I’m sure this happens in a non-zero number of cases. I’m sure is just as likely, if not more so, that the non-custodial spouse was perfectly happy to pay for designer clothes and horseback lessons and cavier every night before the split, but now is done with their old family and would rather spend the money on a new one. And that’s pretty crappy.
Your ex-wife’s new husband is not legally or morally obligated to support your children in the event of a split with your ex-wife. You are legally or morally obligated to support your daughter.
I don’t understand how this is not blindingly obvious.
Hell, if someone were to give me 170,000/month, I think I’d gladly volunteer to kick 43,000 of it to the former Mrs. Milan and the pack.
Their new step-parent to be has no legal obligation to support them, so anything he contributes is voluntary and extra. Should they get divorced and the gymnastics stops, well, hey, hoped you enjoyed it while you had it, kids.
It would be the same principal if a doting grandfather paid for his granddaughter’s extracurriculars out of his social security check, but then died. Life isn’t fair.
I’m not sure you’re having trouble articulating your position. It seems that your position is that a non-custodial parent should only be required to pay the bare minimum for support and requiring anything more is punishing the non-custodial parent for getting a divorce. My position (and probably others) is that not requiring the non-custodial parent to contribute enough that the child can maintain his or her standard as close as possible to the pre-divorce standard is punishing the child for the divorce. If the family was living an $80,000 lifestyle on a million dollar income, the child support should reflect that. If the family was living an $80,000 lifestyle on a million dollar income but the kids were raised to believe that cost would not be an issue for college and graduate education, the child support should reflect that.
What shouldn’t happen is that the kids live a million dollar lifestyle pre-divorce, and an $80,000 lifestyle post-divorce while the non-custodial parent and the second family live a million dollar lifestyle. Because that says nothing more than "I only want you to have these things as long as I’m married to/involved with your other parent. If we break up, I will only provide the amount of support that will keep me out of jail for ". I’m sure plenty of people do believe that kids should be punished because of a divorce- they certainly act like it - but that doesn’t mean society should actually allow them to do it.
And BTW, don’t get the idea that CPS determinations of neglect are unrelated to income. I worked in CPS for a long time, and one of the standards was “while financially able to do so”. If a family truly couldn’t afford adequate food,clothing or housing , it was not considered neglect and we would find a way to provide it. If a family didn’t provide needed braces because they couldn’t afford it , not neglect and we would try to find a way for the kid to get braces. If the family had a $100,000/year income and didn’t get the kid braces, I suppose we would have gone to court- although generally just the fact that we showed up made those families change their mind. Speaking of which ,at that time, parents of children in voluntary or involuntary foster care who were not on public assistance ended up with what were essentially child support orders. Calculated based on income and the number of children, much like support orders in divorce.
THANK YOU for posting this. When my parents got divorced, I was ~ 10 years old and my sister was 8. My father didn’t even ask for full physical custody because there was no way in Hell he would have been able to commit to it; he traveled too much for work. Mom certainly didn’t have a problem taking full custody, but that of course meant she had no time to pursue an advanced degree which would have led to more professional opportunities (and in fact dropped out of a master’s program while they were still married for the same reason - she had already put Dad through his MBA). Until we were old enough to take care of ourselves after school, she always had to take jobs (which didn’t pay as well) that mean that 100% of the time, she would be available to pick us up at day care before 6 pm. Love life for Mom, post-divorce? If she was lucky, on alternate weekends when we were at Dad’s house.
So here we are, ~ 30 years later; Dad is retired, having remarried twice (each time to younger women - his current wife is 14 years younger), with a very nice paid-off co-op in New York and a healthy retirement account. Mom is still working, trying to scrape by on Social Security and substitute teaching, living in a somewhat run-down condo which will probably not be paid off in her lifetime, and has gone through almost all her savings, and I will probably end up partially supporting her. She never remarried.
So who came out ahead in the divorce? Cry me a fucking river about how tough non-custodial fathers have it.
My point is that that is completely different and separate from holding custodial parents accountable for itemized expenses.
It’s also different than the OP: the OP holds that a parent making $80k ought to be compelled to pay more than a parent making $40K, but that at some point that escalation should top out. I can’t see any argument for that: if it’s ok to mandate increasing payments beyond the most basic, it seems ok to continue mandating increases: if the middle class parent can be compelled to help pay for summer camp and piano lessons that the poor parent couldn’t, I don’t see why the rich parent can’t be compelled to pay for European vacations and French nannies that the middle-class parent couldn’t afford.
Your argument is much more logically consistent, though, like Jimmy Chitwood, I tend to think it’s barbaric: the reason we don’t compel comfortable people to support their children above the most basic needs is that cases of that happening are vanishingly small, and when they do occur they virtually always seem rooted in the parents’ belief that it’s the best thing for their child: a parent might share a very frugal lifestyle with their kids because they sincerely think it’s best. This is sharply different from a non-custodial parent who has gone on with his life and has little interest in the kids anymore.
See, I disagree.
If parents are married, they agree TOGETHER what is best for the kid. It’s imperfect, sure, but generally with two adults involved, the kids gets taken care of to a level that is commensurate with their income, even if it’s for no other reason than the parents themselves don’t want to live in poverty.
After the divorce, why should one parent suddenly get to decide the lifestyle, simply because they earn more, or because they’ve decided not to take custody (or some combo of those)? How is that fair at all?
Imagine I was married with two young kids and had an income of a million dollars a year and used my fortune only for my own betterment. That is I live in a mansion with servants and multiple luxury cars and so forth. But I force my wife and kids to live in a shack on the grounds of my estate and give them only enough money to stay above the poverty line. I’d be an asshole, right? Why is it different if the kids don’t live with me? They are still my kids.
If your wife agrees to the shack situation, it’s reasonable to assume she would not come after you for support in the case of a divorce, since she is happy living that way, and feels it’s right for the kids. If, however, your wife thinks you are an abusive asshole and divorces you, she will (finally!) be able to ensure your children live at the level you can afford. This is the same for a couple like the Buffets. They agree that raising their children in obscene wealth isn’t healthy, and they would probably continue to feel that way even if they divorced. And the law allows for that.
What it doesn’t allow for is one asshole parent dictating how the children must live because they make more, or don’t have custody.
I agree with your basic point that during marriage both couples make these decisions based upon joint discussion about what they feel is in the best interest of the children. After divorce, you have two individuals making individual decisions on what they feel is the best interest of the kids. If Mom wants to spend all of her money buying toys for the kids, but Dad only wants the bare minimum, I still don’t see the reason why the court should now step in and saying what Dad wants to do now is unacceptable when in the former situation it was perfectly fine. Yes, Mom could argue with it during the marriage, but the whole purpose of divorce is to change the status quo to allow each person to make individual decisions.
Others have said that my proposal is “barbaric” and I obviously disagree. All my proposal does is gives a parent the same freedom to care for his or her child in the same manner and with the same choice he had but for a divorce.
Does anyone here think that a married couple who makes $5 million per year but clothes their kids from Goodwill and feeds them a sustenance diet should be forced to spend more money on their kids? If no, then why does that freedom to make that choice disappear simply because Mom and Dad can’t get along.
I also contend that the resentments which build from having to pay a proportion of income that may or may not be used on your children harms the ability of the divorced parents to cooperate for the betterment of the children. If Dad didn’t think he was getting his pockets picked, he might not be so upset.
If Dad is paying for extras above the minimum necessary (and mandated to do so), shouldn’t he be allowed to do that by having a get together at his house? Why do all of his child care expenses have to go to Mom and make her the sole decision maker about how money is spent on their child? Why can’t he keep a portion of them in trust to spend on the child as he sees fit? Because he’s not the primary caregiver, he loses all decision-making rights?
I will agree that it is extremely selfish and assholish to withhold benefits from your kids. But why can I retain the freedom to be an asshole after a divorce?
Because at the time of a divorce, the court has to make an award in the absence of agreement. The only question is how much, and that question is based on what the court thinks is reasonable under the circumstances. I’m not sure why you won’t accept this answer. During a marriage, no court is being presented with the question of whether your children are being reasonably provided for. At the time of divorce, the court has to be presented with that question in order to prevent people from skipping out on obligations they’ve created themselves.
The question is why should your having previously been an asshole when the court wasn’t involved limit the court’s ability to do what it thinks is reasonable when it does get involved?
Because even if the court did get involved during a marriage, everything would be okay with the minimum levels I’m talking about. Take our married couple with $5 million in income providing only a basic existence to their children. The neighbor calls CPS. The court looks at everything, sees the kids are fed, clothed, and are taken care of properly, then all is fine. You don’t take them to the movies or buy them sports cars, even though you can afford it. No problem, not the government’s business. That is the default rule for what “supporting your children” means under law.
But now with a divorce, the rules change for some reason. “Skipping out on obligations” now has a new meaning. Now the same family court judge who determined that the millionaire couple weren’t breaking any laws last year, will enter an order demanding, under penalty of imprisonment, that Dad provide a level of support that is much higher than previously required by law.
If children from divorced families are entitled by law to support to the extent of Dad’s income, why should children from married families be denied that same protection?
In this hypothetical, are the parents living a lavish lifestyle while they dress their kids in goodwill and feed them beans and rice? If so, that doesn’t happen, or happens vanishingly, freakishly rarely. The general idea that kids are supported at the same lifestyle as their parents (broadly speaking) is pretty damn near universal.
What often happens, as it seems to be hard-wired into human nature, is that the non-custodial parent really cannot see how expensive raising a child is. It’s why the check comes up short when everyone throws in what they estimate their share is: there’s tremendous motivation to lie to yourself. But the custodial parent is the one with the check: they have to make up the difference.
The HHS poverty line adds about $4k per person. So let’s set the minimum at half that. I really think that if that were the case, tons of non-custodial parents would pay $3K a year and think of themselves as overly generous. $3K sounds like a lot of money, but it’s nothing in terms of what it actually costs to raise a child. Unlike extravagant millionaires who live the high life leaving their kids in poverty, people that routinely underestimate their fair share of a nebulous expense are common as rain.
Yes, if the non-custodial parent could pay only 10-15% of the child care expenses and pat themselves on the back for being even that generous, they might feel better about the whole thing. I am not sure how this would strengthen the relationship with the kids, nor help the relationship with the other parent be more amicable. If anything, if the non-custodial parent is significantly less well off, it puts them in the very unpleasant position of having to beg and placate their old partner to secure their children’s future.
He can. Child support as it is is not a maximum.
If nothing else, because your partner had them with the understanding that they would have some claim on their patrimony until they were 18.
Can I ask you in earnest whether you actually mean it when you say “with a divorce, the rules change for some reason”? Are you as puzzled as you seem to be about the difference, in terms of how the children are going to be provided for, between two married people living in the same house raising their own children in that house and two people who aren’t married anymore and don’t live together anymore, where one of them is raising the children and the other one is the one with all the money?
I don’t know what it would mean to have the same rules for divorced people as there are for a married couple. The rules change because those two things are completely different. When you’re married and raising your own children, you get to make choices about how unreasonably your children should be deprived of comfort, because hey, you’re raising them. Your house, your rules. Once you’ve abdicated or been relieved of that responsibility, it seems pretty obvious to me that you shouldn’t get to determine how they’re raised anymore. Why should anybody listen to you at that point? But they’re still your kids and you’re still responsible for the bills.