Amount Of Child Support Research Articles

Minimum Amount of Child Support and a Child Support Foundation: History and Modernity

Issues concerning consolidation of the minimum amount of child support in the RF Family Code and the creation of a child support foundation in the Russian Federation are very relevant at the doctrinal and law enforcement levels, since ensuring the needs of the child is inevitably associated with certain expenses that are not always properly and sufficiently funded by parents. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that the minimum amount of child support and the child support foundation ought to act as complementary legal structures. On the one hand, the State is capable to guarantee children a maintenance payment not lower than the minimum amount of child support only if there is the child support foundation. On the other hand, the amount of child support accrued for the maintenance of children is determined on a case-by-case basis; «extra child support» can also be applied; the resources of the child support foundation are not unlimited. Therefore, from the child support foundation for the maintenance of a child whose parent failed to provide child support in a timely manner, only the minimum amount of child support (or part of it in case of partial payment of child support by the parent) should be paid rather than the entire monthly amount. Thus, the law-maker must simultaneously make additions to the RF Family Code to consolidate the minimum amount of child support (in the amount of the half of the subsistence minimum for children established in the constituent entity of the Russian Federation where the child lives) and to establish the child support foundation. It is implicit that the parent must be legally obliged to reimburse the funds paid by the child support foundation with the interest charged on the specified amount for the period when the parent fails to provide child support. The paper analyzes the Soviet experience of establishing the minimum amount of child support in 1918–1926 and 1986–1994, as well as the design of the Soviet child support foundation that existed from 1984 to 1991.

Child Support Policy across High-Income Countries: Similar Problems, Different Approaches

We provide an overview of child support policy in high-income countries, highlighting differences in institutional arrangements, the amount of child support due, and the amount of child support received. We show that the United States expects high levels of child support from nonresident parents when compared to other countries, that noncompliance is a problem across countries, and that most European countries deal with nonpayment of child support by providing guarantees of public support for children and resident parents. The guarantee schemes vary in terms of eligibility and generosity. Throughout, we find that child support policy approaches differ across countries. A key policy implication from this review is that the United States may be expecting too much child support from nonresident parents and that it could consider guaranteeing a modest amount of public support to single-parent households.

Lone mothers and child support receipt in 21 European countries

AbstractWith increasing trends in divorce, separation and multi-partner fertility, more families have become subject to child support policies. This paper explores child support receipt in 21 European countries using 2017–2018 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data. We investigated: (1) cross-country differences in the prevalence and amount of child support received and (2) the determinants of child support receipt among lone mothers across countries. We found that the proportion of lone-mother families receiving child support ranged from 16 per cent in Luxembourg to 75 per cent in the Czech Republic, with large variations in the amount of child support received. Our results suggested that the socioeconomic characteristics of lone mothers, including marital status, education, employment status, number of children and income, were associated with the likelihood of receiving child support in most countries but these associations varied significantly across countries.

A Child Support Framework Accounting for Parenting Time and Half-Siblings

In the United States, child support guidelines sometimes generate surprising and presumably unintentional child support amounts, especially in situations with extended visitation, shared parenting, and half-siblings. These are consequences of the ad-hoc mathematical formulas that are in common use to account for such situations. This paper provides ten such surprising examples from ten randomly selected states. A child support calculation framework is constructed that takes as inputs the subjective/normative decisions that the public and legislators must make regarding children's expenditures, the progressivity of the contributions between parents, and other matters. Our goal is to derive mathematical formulas for child support amounts that achieve those normative goals while satisfying basic desiderata such as supporting children in both of their families, equity between siblings, neutral medical decisions, and not requiring higher contributions from parents with a lower salary.

Does gender diversity in panels of judges matter? Evidence from French child support cases

In this article, we examine whether and to what extent the gender composition of a panel of three judges may have an impact on its decision in a civil law system characterized by a very large representation of females among judges. From a database of 2000 decisions from French Courts of Appeal, we show that the gender composition of panels of judges have a significant effect on the amounts of child support. More specifically, our results show that panels composed of three female judges set higher child support amounts than mixed panels, regardless of the gender of the creditor. In addition, the diminishing effect of the panel’s gender mix is particularly pronounced when the creditor is a man and the mixed panel is composed of two women and one man.

What Happens When the Amount of Child Support Due Is a Burden? Revisiting the Relationship between Child Support Orders and Child Support Payments

AbstractChild support policies typically call for noncustodial fathers to provide their children financial support. However, setting orders too high may be counterproductive, resulting in lower pay...

Does paying child support impoverish fathers in the United States, Finland, and the United Kingdom?

The increased frequency of divorce, separation, and nonmarital childbearing over the past several decades has contributed to the rise of parents not living with their children in the same household. These nonresident parents are typically fathers, many of whom are obligated to share the economic responsibility for their children across households by paying child support. This study uses Luxemburg Income Study (LIS) datasets from the year 2013 to study the characteristics of fathers paying support and the relationship between child support and poverty among fathers (and mothers) in Finland, the UK, and the U.S.Results show that characteristics of fathers paying support were generally similar across countries. The amounts paid were lowest in Finland and highest in the U.S., as expected. For the poverty effects, few child support payers fall into poverty because of the amount of child support they pay in any country, but the increase in poverty rates due to paying support is clearly higher in the U.S. than Finland or the UK. More single mothers are drawn out of poverty by the receipt of child support in Finland than in the other countries, partly because the government guarantees child support. Finally, child support is an anti-poverty policy in all countries: the decrease in poverty among single-mother families from receiving support is larger than the increase in poverty among fathers paying support.

The Impact of Child Support on the Household Income and Labour Supply of Payee Lone Mothers

One objective of child support schemes is to reduce the reliance of lone parents on government transfers. I estimate the effect of receiving child support on the household income and labour market activity of payee lone mothers in Australia. I use variation in the amount of child support received driven by the employment status of the paying parent, and find that receiving any child support reduces government transfers, increases labour force participation, and increases household income in excess of the amount of child support received. Increasing the amount of child support received does not decrease the employment rate or hours worked of lone mothers.

Determination of the Amount of Minor Children Support in Court

. International instruments and Russian legislation treat the right of the child to care and material support as the priority rights. In real life, this right is not always ensured. More than two million children in Russia do not receive child support. It is necessary to work on the further strengthening of legal safeguards for minor children left without sufficient support. The establishment of a minimum size of child support collected in favor of minors will eliminate the instances of unjustified reduction of the child support amount. The author considers erroneous the judicial practice aimed at determining the amount of child support in accordance with the debtor's obligation to support other children. The paper justifies a differentiated approach to determining the rates applied to calculate the amount of child support based on a regressive scale depending on the income of the debtor. Based on international law and Russian legislation concerning the priority of the rights and interests of minor children, it is proposed to provide for the possibility of compensating the amounts unpaid by debtors from state funds in the Russian family legislation. It is unacceptable to limit the right of adult children, who had the right to child support, to recover penalties when such claims are made after the expiry of a three-year period from the moment when they reach the age of majority.

Child Support: The Problem of Misuse of Child Support

The article examines the legislative and enforcement aspects of changing the manner and order of enforcing a court order (holding or injunction) on recovery of child support by allowing the payment of not more than a half of the amount of child support to a bank account in the child's name. This measure is intended to prevent misuse of the child support by the parent who receives it (acts as a beneficiary). It was concluded that it is necessary to supplement the Family Code provision that allows the payment of not more than 50 per cent of the amount of child support to the bank accounts in the name of the child with an indicative list of grounds that the child support payer can rely on to go to court with a relevant claim. It is also proposed that Chapter 17 of the RF FC be supplemented by a provision giving the court the right to compel a parent who receives the child support the amount of which exceeds the amount stipulated by the law to submit to the child support payer a monthly report on child support expenditure.

The impact of child support on child health

The broad goals of child support policy are to keep children in single-parent families out of poverty and to make sure that their material needs are met. One potentially important, but relatively understudied, set of measures of child well-being are health outcomes. A fixed-effects analysis of data from the Child and Young Adult file of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth shows that, conditional upon receipt of some amount of child support, higher payment levels are associated with significantly greater odds of having private health insurance coverage and significantly lower odds of poor or declining health status. These effects persist even after controlling for other factors that are likely to be correlated with child support payments, including total family income and paternal visitation patterns.

Public intuitions about fair child support allocations: Converging evidence for a “Fair Shares” rule.

Nearly all American states use one of two systems for setting the amount of child support that noncustodial parents (NCPs) are required to pay to custodial parents (CPs). In previous work, we found that lay judgments of the child support amount the law should require differ in meaningful ways from these two systems: Our respondents favored child support amounts that are more responsive to the NCP’s income and much more responsive to the CP’s income than set by either system. They also favored dollar amounts that increase more rapidly with NCP income when CP income is lower, producing a characteristic fanning lines pattern when dollar support amounts are charted against NCP income for several different CP incomes. We give the label “Fair Shares” to these two features of our respondents’ child support judgments. We describe six new experimental studies that vary the context of these judgments in ways that test whether the “Fair Shares” account is robust. Our studies consistently replicate the fan-shaped pattern and shed further light on lay judgments.

Public Intuitions About Fair Child Support Allocations: Converging Evidence for an 'Ability to Contribute' Rule

Nearly all American states use one of two systems for setting the amount of child support that noncustodial parents (NCPs) are required to pay to custodial parents (CPs). In previous work we found that lay judgments of the child support amount the law should require differ in meaningful ways from these two systems: Our respondents favor child support amounts that are more responsive to the NCP’s income, and much more responsive to the CP’s income, than set by either system. They also favor dollar amounts that increase more rapidly with NCP income when CP income is lower, producing a characteristic fanning lines pattern when dollar support amounts are charted against NCP income for several different CP incomes. We give the label “Fair Shares” to these two features of our respondents’ child support judgments. We describe 6 new experimental studies that vary the context of these judgments in ways that test whether the “Fair Shares” account is robust. Our studies consistently replicate the fan shaped pattern and shed further light on lay judgments. A revised version of this paper has been acceptred for publication in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.

Abstract principles and concrete cases in intuitive lawmaking.

Citizens awaiting jury service were asked a series of items, in Likert format, to determine their endorsement of various statements about principles to use in setting child support amounts. These twenty items were derived from extant child support systems, from past literature and from Ellman and Ellman's (2008) Theory of Child Support. The twenty items were found to coalesce into four factors (principles). There were pervasive gender differences in respondent's endorsement of the principles. More importantly, three of these four principles were systematically reflected, in very rational (if complex) ways, in the respondents' resolution of the individual child support cases they were asked to decide. Differences among respondents in their endorsement of these three principles accounted for differences in their patterns of child support judgments. It is suggested that the pattern of coherent arbitrariness (Ariely et al., Q J Econ 118(1):73-105, 2003) in those support judgments, noted in an earlier study (Ellman, Braver, & MacCoun, 2009) is thus partially explained, in that the seeming arbitrariness of respondents' initial support judgments reflect in part their differing views about the basic principles that should decide the cases.

Abstract principles and concrete cases in intuitive lawmaking.

Citizens awaiting jury service were asked a series of items, in Likert format, to determine their endorsement of various statements about principles to use in setting child support amounts. These twenty items were derived from extant child support systems, from past literature and from Ellman and Ellman’s (2008) Theory of Child Support. The twenty items were found to coalesce into four factors (principles). There were pervasive gender differences in respondent’s endorsement of the principles. More importantly, three of these four principles were systematically reflected, in very rational (if complex) ways, in the respondents’ resolution of the individual child support cases they were asked to decide. Differences among respondents in their endorsement of these three principles accounted for differences in their patterns of child support judgments. It is suggested that the pattern of coherent arbitrariness (Ariely et al., Q J Econ 118(1):73–105, 2003) in those support judgments, noted in an earlier study (Ellman, Braver, & MacCoun, 2009) is thus partially explained, in that the seeming arbitrariness of respondents’ initial support judgments reflect in part their differing views about the basic principles that should decide the cases.

Intuitive Lawmaking II: The Relationship between Citizens' Endorsement of Principles and Their Resolution of Cases

Citizens awaiting jury service were asked a series of items, in Likert format, to determine their endorsement of various principles that might be called upon to explain legal judgments about the appropriate amount of child support to require in individual cases. These items were derived from extant systems, from past literature and from Ellman and Ellman's (2008) Theory of Child Support. These items were found to coalesce into four factors, three of which corresponded roughly with the principles that Theory endorsed. There were pervasive gender differences in respondent's endorsement of these four basic principles. Three of the four principles abstracted from the item responses were systematically reflected in the respondents' resolution of individual child support cases they were asked to decide. Differences among respondents in their endorsement of these three basic principles explained much of the variance among them in their child support judgments. It is suggested that the pattern of coherent arbitrariness (Ariely, Loewenstein and Prelec 2003) in those support judgments, noted in an earlier study (Ellman, Braver, and MacCoun 2009) is thus partially explained, in that the seeming arbitrariness of respondents' initial support judgments reflect in part their differing views about the basic principles that should decide the cases.

Intuitive Lawmaking: The Example of Child Support

Setting the amount of a child support award involves tradeoffs in the allocation of finite resources among at least three private parties: the two parents, and their child or children. Federal law today requires states to have child support guidelines or formulas that determine child support amounts on a uniform statewide basis. These state guidelines differ in how they make these unavoidable tradeoffs. In choosing the correct balance of these competing claims, policymakers would do well to understand the public's intuitions about the appropriate tradeoffs. We report an empirical study of lay intuitions about these tradeoffs, which we compare to the principles underlying typical state guidelines. As in other contexts in which people are asked to place a dollar value on a legal claim, we find that citizen assessments of child support for particular cases conform to the pattern that Ariely and his co‐authors have called “coherent arbitrariness”: the respondent's choice of dollar magnitude may be arbitrary, but relative values respond coherently to case variations, within and across citizens. These patterns also suggest that our respondents have a consistent and systematic preference with respect to the structure of child support formulas that differs in important ways from either of the two systems adopted by nearly all states.

The Marginalization of Nonresident Fathers: Their Postdivorce Roles

ABSTRACT A sample of 260 Australian men were surveyed about their experience as nonresident fathers and their contact with their children. Most reported having little input into decisions concerning children's postseparation living arrangements, the amount of child support they paid, and the spending of their child support payments. Many claimed to have very limited say in any parenting decisions, and little or no involvement in children's schools. Fathers' limited parental role was found to be negatively correlated with their ongoing contact and involvement with children, and positively with their reported level of interparental hostility. Many respondents viewed their marginalization as parents as an impediment to their capacity to develop meaningful relationships with their children.

The Purpose of Child Support

What is the appropriate amount of child support to require in particular cases? How should we take account, if at all, of subsequent events such as either parent's remarriage? It seems obvious that the answers to such questions ought to turn on our purpose in requiring support payments in the first place. But while fixing the amount of child support can be politically contentious, and has attracted the attention of partisans on both sides of the gender gap, the literature contains no systematic examination of support rules in light of their underlying policy purpose. This article identifies the three fundamental policy purpose that explain why we require child support, shows that the federally-required guidelines that determine most support orders are not usually designed to further those policies, and shows why this design failure the unintended but inevitable consequence of the methods most states rely upon for constructing their guidelines. The Article offers a new method for setting support guidelines that would ensure they reflect the policymakers' purpose. It draws on work in law and economics, and psychology, in analyzing current practice and in formulating its suggested alternative.

A Further Look at Child Support Guidelines

Jo Michelle Beld's article on child support guidelines defends the efforts of the Minnesota Child Support Enforcement Division to maintain the state's formula for determining child support award amounts (2003). She responds to long-standing criticism, in this instance conveyed by Stephen Baskerville, that the child support enforcement community, which has a financial interest in child support amounts, exercises unchecked authority through the forced use of guidelines, and that as a result, child support awards are arbitrarily high (2002).