But what of she couldn’t afford cable at all without the support payments? She couldn’t have gotten the safer, bigger, newer car or the nicer apartment or the fresh vegetables? If the custodial parent makes a lot less than the custodial parent, accepting child support will improve her quality of life. And that is what I see people objecting to. That is what makes non-custodial parents feel screwed, and I don’t see any way around it.
I think that’s just tough noogies then. Child support is child support, not spousal support. If the new car is used 90% of the time for Mom to use to go to work and 10% of the time to take the kids to school or soccer practice, it’s not up to Dad to provide that 90% for Mom.
This is exactly why people complain of high child support awards as being back door alimony.
Where the heck do you guys live? I grew up in California, where joint custody is the default unless one partner is grossly unfit or voluntarily gives up custody. Joint custody is a real thing that people do. I also know a few custodial fathers- and no, their exes are not “crack whores.” Often it’s that they were stay-at-home dads while the mother pursued her career. Since they were the primary caretaker (and took the career hit that raising a child can cause) they got custody and child support. It’s not like men never, ever, ever get custody of their kids. I don’t think many places would keep a guy from joint custody. Where the courts are unfair, I am all for fighting for men’s rights to not get different treatment in custody cases because of their gender. But somehow, the guys aren’t here fighting for that. They’d rather bitch about having to pay child support. When unfair courts do come up, it’s as a throwaway thing to support their idea that they shouldn’t have to pay child support. If this was really the issue, you think you’d care more about it.
What is my stake in this? I’m 32, feeling my biological clock, and I would LOVE to do the highlights version of parenting. I’m realizing that it’d be really neat to have kids. I don’t want to die alone, and it’d be neat to put on easter egg hunts and stuff. But having kids would be a real lifestyle burden for me. I’m an avid traveller, I loooooove dating, and prefer temporary, high-risk jobs that are exciting and lead me to new adventures. I would much prefer a life of wandering the world trying to be a travel writer and hooking up with cute randos to trying to keep up a marriage and having to work what would probably be a steady desk job.
I’m seeing a guy now who loves kids and would be a great father. I’m sure I could convince him to reproduce. He’s a student and I’m on a really nice career track, so I’m sure we could work it out so he could be a stay at home father.
Now, if I were a worse person, I could say “Cool, I’ll try out the whole being a mom thing, and if it doesn’t work out I’ll divorce, he’ll raise the kids, and I can go on with my freewheeling life.” I’m sure I could build in enough plausible deniability to convince even myself that wasn’t my plan all along. People change their minds, right? I’m sure I’d be really into it when the kid was a baby, because it’s new and exciting. But as the kid grew up and it became boring, I’m sure it wouldn’t be to hard to suddenly realize I’m not really fulfilled. I’m sure I could start fighting with my husband, and eventually we’d realize it’d be better to split up. It’s not like I’d set out for a failed marriage, but I could have it in the back of my head as a “way out.”
And I’d still get the cool parts of parenting. I could still see the kids on the weekends, spoil them with out food, bring them back cool things from my travels and be a cherished part of their life. I could go to the graduation, but not have to drive them to school ever darn morning. I could go to their wedding, but not have to deal with teenagers dating. I’m sure if I made it to enough weekends and big events, they’d still treat me as a “mom” when they are adults- which is really the part I want most. Raising kids seems like a pain in the butt, but having kids seems pretty fun.
Why should I be able to do that AND not even have to contribute beyond the bare minimum financially? If I get the freedom to live without driving the kids to school, the freedom to not worry if Junior becomes a delinquent because the authorities won’t be coming after me, and the freedom to choose to have my child in someone else’s hands, why should I then get to use that to tell that someone else how to raise the kid? Why should I not just get off pretty much scott free, but actually pretty much entirely scott free?
What if it’s 90% driving the kids around, 10% for Mom to get to and from work, Mom couldn’t afford even the 10% without the support payments but could take the bus to work if she didn’t have to drop/off pick up the kids before and after ? And somebody, somewhere will argue that cable costs are the same whether one person is watching or five, so child support shouldn’t go to that at all, and that argument will be countered by one that says Mom doesn’t watch much cable, and she never would have gotten it if not for the kids.
It’s really not as simple as you’d like it to be.
Tough noogies for whom? The kids? Is making sure mom doesn’t get an unfair boost really the first priority? And what about the significant portion of the car’s use that is neither for work or school: trips to the store? Trips to grandma? Are those for the kid or for mom? I just don’t see how you disentagle these things.
This fear of “back door alimony” is exactly why careful accountability wouldn’t work. Too many non-custodial parents would rather see their kids go hungry than have their money help feed their ex, and from that framework, any expense seems more to the exes benefit than the kids. Breaking it down to itemized cases won’t soothe their animosity, it will just give it focus.
Married couples living together are not unreasonably presumed to be better able to work out mutually satisfactory solutions to family disputes, and to have the good of the united family more at heart, than divorced couples living apart.
This does kinda make sense, if you think about it. A divorced couple definitely has on their record at least one highly visible failure to work out a mutually satisfactory solution to disputes and to maintain a united family. The law is arguably justified in assuming that more legal meddling may be required to get these people’s familial shit together than a stable married couple would require.
After all, if the divorced parents do still have a united view on what’s in their children’s best interests and who should pay for what part of their needs, the law’s not stopping them from implementing that view by mutual consent. If ex-spouses are still able to make family decisions harmoniously, they needn’t drag the courts into it at all.
But if the courts are dragged in, it’s not unreasonable for the courts to assume that this couple is somewhat severely dysfunctional when it comes to making decisions about family matters, so the courts are entitled to impose their own decisions on the ex-spouses more intrusively than they would for a stable married couple.
Note, by the way, that these imposed decisions aren’t always in favor of the custodial parent’s wishes, either. Plenty of times a court will deny a custodial parent’s appeal for an increase in support payments from a non-custodial parent.
Those same courts wouldn’t interfere with a non-divorced couple where one parent was pestering or coercing the other into providing more money for the family budget, just like they wouldn’t interfere in your example of a non-divorced couple where one parent was being stingy with the kids. But if the couple is divorced, the court has no hesitation in interfering in this familial dispute to tell the pestering parent “Shut up your whining, this is all the money you’re entitled to get”.
TL;DR version: Acrimonious divorce = more court meddling in your private family life. Don’t want courts meddling? Then don’t fail so bad at managing your private family life that the court has to step in to mediate.
If you and your ex-spouse can’t manage to agree on fundamental issues like how much money should be spent on the kids, then you’ve forfeited your originally assumed matrimonial privilege of making these decisions as a couple without legal interference. If the two of you had been able to negotiate a mutually satisfactory arrangement like a couple of grownups, the law would have left you alone.
I would think most men would like those things to stop, too, were they going on. It does not change the facts that
- Most divorces are initiated by women (cite)
- Most support payments are made by men
- In most states at least, there is nothing stopping one spouse (male or female) from both initiating the divorce and subsequently still receiving alimony or support payments
When assessing child support, courts almost never care about who did what when to whom; blame is not relevant, as the Courts are required to act in what it sees as the best interest of the child. Even when there are not dependent children present, the question of initiation or fault for the divorce is, at most, only one factor in determining alimony.
You can draw whatever conclusions you like from that, or explain it however you want, or defend it or not, but those are the facts.
It’s my understanding that no state in the union currently requires anyone to get married and/or have children. Having a kid is a real life commitment. The kid is committed. He or she has to obey the laws of society, go to school, and generally exist on this planet in whatever conditions his or parents supply, whether they like it or not. The custodial parent has a commitment. They are ultimately responsible for making sure the child is not only taken care of, but remains a responsible citizen at least until majority. Custodial parents can face consequences if their kids become truants or criminals. It’s a huge amount of responsibility that they cannot get out of even if they really want to.
So as everyone is divvying up their responsibilities, why should the non custodial parent get the least? Nobody else in this story can get out of their lot. The non-custodial parent already has the most flexibility- the can parent as much as they feel like, they can earn their money however they like, they can move easily and can generally do what they want as long as they manage that check. And now they should be expected to shoulder even less? All this despite the fact that statistically, divorce nearly always leads to an improved financial situation for the non-custodial parent (even with child support) and a decreased one for the custodial parent?
Having a child with another person (versus single adoption or single artificial inseminations) means you are financially responsible for that child. This can be arranged in any number if ways- ideally this is arranged by agreeing with the other parent on how to raise the kid and what everyone’s expected contributions should be (this works either inside of or outside of marriage.) The other option is to split up the costs and responsibilities equally with joint custody. The third option, when you can’t make the first two pretty nice options work, is to have the court manage it. If you take that third option, your lifetime commitment that you made when you had that child is around 15% of your income. Having a kid means something. Having a kid is a commitment. Having a kid means some of your life options change. Having a kid is damn expensive. I’m not sure why people think anything can mitigate that. Someone has to pay this stuff, and having the person who made the kid kick in a share makes the most sense.