JPC sr said:
The issue with child support is that it is a type of social engineering where the political purpose is to stop families from breaking up by punishing the parents, and particularly degrading the separated parents.
If it is your argument that
child support is what would stop parents from breaking up, then that's probably a good thing. Our divorce laws are far too easy. Getting out of a marriage should be harder than getting out of a cell phone contract, not vice versa. And, if some small per centage of a non-custodial parent's income would stop them from leaving a family, or make them work harder at keeping the family, the family could probably be saved.
It might appear okay to the custodial parent as they receive the praise and a little cash too and the separated parent is penalized to the custodials satisfaction, but in fact both the parents are degraded.
See, this is a fundamental flaw in your perception.
First, the non-custodial parent is not even close to being penalized. It's not a fine. It's providing financial support to the child(ren), because they are not the one(s) who initiated the family split. Either the custodial or non-custodial parent (or, in most cases, a combination thereof) caused the family split, and both the custodial and non-custodial parents, being parents, are financially responsible for their child. The custodial parent handles that responsibility by providing day to day, and so should the non-custodial parent. Normally, this is done by figuring what the custodial parent earns, taking a percentage of that based upon how many children that parent is supporting, and then calling that figure a requirement. Now, if the non-custodial parent chooses to take some action that will change his/her income, the amount stays the same until the process is complete to change that amount based upon the change in status.
Second, the custodial parent is pretty much never satisfied, nor is their satisfaction taken into account. At no point, in no way, shape, or fashion is the custodial parent's wishes considered in the amount of support. It's based solely off of legally predetermined percentages of incomes, and the non-custodial parent's proven ability to earn. Some states take a balance of incomes and go through a long equation to figure out each parent's ability to provide, but even that convoluted process works out to a percentage of each parent's income. Each, custodial and non-custodial.
No one is degraded for providing financial support to their child. I'm not even sure where this perception
could come from, let alone where it did.
First the child support punishes the separated parent for parenting the child, the one blessed thing that the two parents did in having a child is the thing that the gov is attacking the parent for. Then the gov gives a small pittance in child support to pacify the custodial so that the custodials sell out their own children's other parent for petty cash, and then the custodials pretend that no one else knows of the dirty deed.
Again, no one is being punished. They are providing money to a system which then turns around and gives that money to the child via the custodial parent. The one blessed thing that the two parents did in having a child needs to be looked after. Many parents find ways around the laws and don't provide a fair portion of their income to the child, so there need be laws to protect those children. Pacifying the custodial parent is never a consideration. The full amount of child support received is given to the child's custodian for that child's needs.
In what way is it possible to sell out the non-custodial parent? The only way a non-custodial parent can be punished is to become a non-supporting parent. Even then, it takes months to years of continuous non-support to be in any serious trouble with the laws. The laws are very forgiving to a non-supporting parent in terms of time to make restitution. Not very forgiving of the habitual non-supporter, though, for the obvious reason of that parent not taking responsibility for their child. I know of very, very few people in society who condone a non-supporting parent. This is one way society helps look out for the children.
But everybody knows and our gov violates the whole family by those unjust child support laws.
The c/s system needs to be reformed, FYI.
While I would agree that the taxing situation around child support is not always fair, the only way I would change the actual control of the child support system is to have the state pay the child support and get the money to do this from the non-custodial parent. As it stands right now, when a non-custodial parent chooses not to support their child, the child goes without that financial support and costs him/her many needs - and the state has little incentive to agressively pursue the non-supporting parent. Look at the arrearage amounts on the states rolls right now, and I'll bet the normal person would agree that it's a travesty how many non-supporting parents there are. This costs the average taxpayer in terms of medical costs that could be covered by a parent's insurance (but isn't being provided), WIC costs, welfare costs, increases in crime due to unsupervised children while custodial parents are working extra hours/jobs to make up the lack of support, etc. It's in the state's best interest to ensure that a non-custodial parent meets their responsibility to their child.