Child Maintenance Policies in the United States

Abstract

This article describes US child maintenance policy, providing an overview of the scheme in place and how it is working. US child maintenance policy is difficult to describe. On some issues, there is a unified national policy, whereas for others there are separate schemes in each state. For example, in nearly every state, child maintenance obligations follow a principle of continuity-of-expenditure, with obligations set to try to force non-resident parents to spend as much on their children as if they lived with them. However, the precise elements of the formula used to calculate these obligations differ across the states. Further, there is substantial variation in whether (and how) new families affect the obligation, and how situations in which children spend substantial portions of time with each parent are treated. Once the obligation is in place, however, the collection, monitoring, and enforcement system is relatively similar across states, with most states having the same enforcement tools. Key areas of difficulty for the child maintenance system are non-resident parents who have had children with multiple partners, low-income non-resident parents, and responding to cases in which the non-resident parent is in prison.