Noncustodial Parents Research Articles

Low‐Income and Never‐Married Families: Service and Support at the Intersection of Family Court and Child Support Agency Systems

State child support enforcement agencies facilitate the legal establishment of paternity for children born outside of marriage and enforce the payment of child support by noncustodial parents. They are directed to move cash resources from a nonresident parent to the home of his/her child. Ideally, this income transfer provides financial support for children and security for custodial families. This article describes how the agency is challenged in the fulfillment of this responsibility by the adversarial nature of its own process and by the intractable poverty and unemployment (among other barriers to economic security) of a significant portion of its caseload.

A comparison of intergovernmental and private agency collection of child support arrears

Child support payments are intended to improve children's wellbeing by securing financial support from noncustodial parents. Payments in arrear are a significant problem, however, particularly when parents live in different states. Using a mixed-methods design, we compared the effectiveness of a private collection agency to a state agency managing intergovernmental child support cases over a 12-month period on: (1) the techniques, strategies, and methods used for child support enforcement, (2) the total amount of arrears collected, (3) the number of total payments collected, and, (4) the percentage of arrears collected. Though interviews revealed that employees working for the private agency and intergovernmental systems differ substantively in their collection philosophies, strategies, and enforcement tools available, quantitative results showed few differences between the agencies in arrears collections.

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL MAKE- UP OF SOLO PARENTS’ DEPENDENTS IN REGIONS 2 AND 3 IN THE PHILIPPINES

INTRODUCTION:A solo is any individual who falls under either one of the categories here, who was left alone with the responsibility ofparenthood due to death of (paragraph2 (a) Section3, RA 8972) and parent left solo or alone with the responsibility of parenthood due to abandonment of spouse for at least one year, (paragraph 7 (a) Section 3, RA 8972). Republic Act No. 8972 an act providing for benefits and privileges to solo parents and their children , appropriating funds therefore and for other purposes. Approved on November 07 2000 during the Eleventh Congress Third regular session in year 2000.Parenting behaviors are known to have major impact on children. But it has proven difficult to isolate the specific mechanism of influence (Johnson, et. al., 2012). In this case, parenting lifestyle impact so much on the behavior of their children, especially, if these parents singlehandedly raise their children. The idea of single parenting is a very sensitive issue in family system. It brings risk factor for emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents. Family may be defined as A family comprising of a single mother or father having their own dependent children . The single family is created in a number of ways, may be death of one parent, divorce, separation due to job or service condition of the spouse (Inatay, Lifestyle Domains of Single Parents, 2013). Thus, if the dominant care giver is the in which the children have residency with majority of the time. If the parents are separated or divorced children live with their custodial and have visitation with their noncustodial parents, a child will end up with the primary caregiver, usually the mother, and a secondary caregiver, usually the father (Sahu, 2013). Today, one-third of American children - a total of 15 million - are being raised without a father. Nearly more than five million children live without a mother (Andersen, 2013).This research focused on the two sections of the law that give emphasis on the whole picture of a solo dependent who is innocent of the cause among their parents parted ways, who was left alone with the responsibility ofparenthood due to death of (paragraph2 (a) Section3, RA 8972) and parent left solo or alone with the responsibility ofparenthood due to abandonment of spouse for at least one year, (paragraph 7 (a) Section 3, RA 8972). These dependents are pondering why their abandoned them. Solo parenting is often a result of annulment of marriages as decreed by a court or by a church as long as she/he is entrusted with the custody of the children, or the spouse is in jail or is serving sentence for a criminal conviction for at least one year, or due to physical and or mental incapacity of spouse as certified by a public medical practitioner; legal separation or any family member who assumes the responsibility of head of family as a result of the death, abandonment, disappearance or prolonged absence of the parents or solo parents (Sec 3, RA 8972).This research was then conducted due to the stated premises that solo dependents are looking and longing for both care and strong parental love.OBJECTIVES:To identify the lifestyles, experiences, challenges, psycho-social behavior, coping mechanism and aspirations of the solo parents dependents.To be familiar with the challenges, coping mechanism and their aspirations in life.LOCALE OF THE STUDY:This study was conducted at Nueva Ecija University of Science and Technology, Cabanatuan City, Philippines.SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS:The study was focused on the solo dependents, their lifestyles, experiences, psycho -social behavior and academic performance. The study was conducted during the first semester of academic year 2012 - 2013. Only those respondents that qualified for the provisions of paragraph 2(a) and paragraph 7(a), RA 8972 were included. …

Why Requiring Parents to Pay for Postsecondary Education is Unconstituional and Bad Policy

For divorced parents, the question of who should pay for their child's college tuition is very difficult, especially when the issue was never addressed in their separation agreement. Consequently, some states allow judges the discretion to extend child support duties for noncustodial parents after considering certain factors. Such factors may lead to the requirement of parental contributions to their child's postsecondary education. While many states have amended their statutes to encompass extended child support, Pennsylvania is the only state to have found their statute unconstitutional. Based on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Curtis v. Kline, this Note argues that, in order to diminish inequalities between divorced and nondivorced parents, as well as between children of divorced and nondivorced parents, all states should amend their child support statutes to declare that no parent is obligated to pay for his/her child's postsecondary education, unless voluntarily agreed to, in writing, prior to the child entering college.

Child support wage withholding and father–child contact: parental bargaining and salience effects

Past research on child support finds that father–child contact increases as support payments increase. Enforcement policies such as wage withholding also may affect father–child contact even when the amount of support paid is not affected if they change bargaining power between parents or the salience of fathers’ child support obligations. I develop a model of the salience of child support obligations which predicts that introduction of automatic withholding will reduce contact between noncustodial parents and children independent of payment amount. I then examine whether paying child support via wage withholding affects fathers’ frequency of contact with their children and their provision of in-kind support using instrumental variables and bounded OLS techniques for selection on unobservables. Withholding appears to decrease father–child contact. Withholding effects do not occur when payments are made to government agencies or courts but are present when payments go directly to the mother, consistent with bargaining models. More frequent payment schedules are associated with more contact, consistent with salience effects.

Increasing Child Support Collections from the Hard-to-Collect: Experimental Evidence from Washington State

AbstractThis article discusses experimental tests of two recent administrative interventions, the TANF 16 intervention and the statement intervention, designed to increase child support collections in Washington State. The TANF 16 intervention sought to reimburse the state for TANF benefits paid to custodial parents by intensively pursuing collections in arrears-only cases. The statement intervention tested whether sending regular billing statements to noncustodial parents who were new to the child support system increased compliance. While the TANF 16 intervention’s effects represent a substantial percentage improvement over the control group’s payment behavior, it only increased the likelihood of a noncustodial parent ever paying on arrears by 10 percentage points, the number of months with a payment by .47, and total actual payments by $75. The statement intervention did not improve compliance. These interventions demonstrate the difficulty that states face in dramatically improving collections from th...

Religion and Child Custody

This piece draws upon divorce pleadings and other records to show how indications of religion (or disaffiliation) that appear in custody agreements and orders (called “parenting plans” in both states studied) affect the course of the proceedings and legal activities over the five years following divorce filing. Some of the apparent findings are normative, but most are merely descriptive and some may be correlative rather than caused by the indicated concern about religion. While parenting plans are accepted by courts only when they are in the best interests of the child (at least in theory), the child’s independent religious needs were never mentioned in the files I perused.Divorcing couples specifying religious upbringing in their parenting plans tended to be more affluent, to come from lengthier marriages, to settle cases before litigation more often, to share custody more equally (in both states), and to have less domestic violence reported either prior to or following divorce. They were more likely to divorce alleging substance abuse or mental illness, and were more likely to seek reductions of the noncustodial parent’s time with the children following final decrees, particularly when fathers were relatively poorer. The noncustodial (payor) parent was more likely to seek relief because one of the children reached emancipation age. In general, while the pattern is complex, these parents seem like good and thoughtful parents, divorcing only when they needed to and minimizing conflict that the children would see or experience.

Public Sentiments About the Parenting Time Adjustment in Child Support Awards

The states differ substantially among themselves as to what their guideline systems specify about reducing child support awards as a function of the division of parenting time after divorce. Most adopt a “cliff-model”, whereby no reductions are accorded until the parenting time to the noncustodial parent reaches some “shared parenting” threshold, generally about 35% of the total parenting time. As another in a series of experimental investigations about the sentiments of lay citizens pertaining to family law issues, the current investigation probed this issue, as well as the allied issue of whether the reason for nonvisitation might influence the child support adjustment. Results showed that the public’s judgments displayed continuous visitation adjustments to child support (as opposed to the cliff-model system instituted by most states), and that the amount of the adjustment reflected the amount the custodial parent saved due to visitation, rather than the amount the noncustodial parent spent. Of the reasons for non-visitation, only the father’s move (not the mother’s move nor her refusal to permit visitation) significantly affected the respondent’s child support judgments.

Paved with Good Intentions: Unintended Consequences of Federal Proposals to Integrate Child Support and Parenting Time

Promoting the relationships between noncustodial parents and their children has become a federal policy priority. Recent policy proposals aim to achieve this by integrating adjudications of custody and parenting time within proceedings to establish child support. These proposals share several laudable goals, including encouraging the involvement of fathers in their children’s lives, increasing compliance with child support orders, and facilitating unmarried parents’ access to court processes for resolving custody and visitation disputes. But the simplistic solutions employed by the proposals, some of which would mandate that custody and visitation be adjudicated in all child support proceedings, pose serious risks to the low income families they aim to serve — risks that might do more harm to such families than good. This article evaluates the merits and drawbacks of federal parenting time proposals and proposes an alternative, multi-layered approach to facilitating shared parenting among non-marital families.

Why Are Child Support Orders Becoming Less Likely after Divorce?

Despite substantial policy attention to increasing the number of custodial parents with child support orders, the proportion reporting that they are owed child support is falling. Potential explanations for this include increases in shared custody, increases in the number of noncustodial parents who have low incomes (or incomes lower than the custodial parent), and growing discretion to decide whether to participate in the formal child support system. We use data on about 4,000 divorces in Wisconsin that allow us to evaluate these alternative explanations, differentiating between divorces in an earlier period (1996–98) and a later one (2004–7). A multivariate analysis and a standard decomposition approach both show that changes in custody, relative incomes, the freedom to choose child support, and other characteristics explain about half of the decline in the likelihood of orders, but about half remains unexplained. Changes in custody are particularly important in explaining the trend.

Are children susceptible to manipulation? The best interest of children and their testimony

In Richard Gardner's proposed parental alienation syndrome, children reject contact with the noncustodial parent due to manipulation from the custodial parent. We investigated whether children are, in fact, easily manipulated, and how. Half of a sample of children ages 6 to 12 witnessed an incident of verbal aggression, while the other half did not. All were asked to report what happened. Half were then subjected to high pressure, stating that the aggressor would be their future teacher. Subjects were furthermore told that the perpetrator was either a good person or a bad person. After these two manipulations they reported again what they had witnessed. The results indicate that children rarely lie, and that although 40% of those who witnessed nothing created a false memory of an aggressive incident, this outcome was not influenced by the degree of pressure or positive or negative manipulation. We found no significant differences based on gender or age. We conclude that Gardner's ideas about parental alienation syndrome, and in particular the ease of parental manipulation of children, were not empirically verified. We recommend that this concept not be used in the legal system.

Should the earned income tax credit rise for childless adults?

The earned income tax credit provides important benefits to low-income families with children in the US. At an annual cost of about $60 billion, it increases the incomes of such families while encouraging parents to work more by subsidizing their incomes. But low-income adults without children and non-custodial parents receive only very low payments under the program, providing them with little income benefits or work incentives. Many of these adults are low-income young men whose wages and employment rates have been declining for years and who might benefit substantially from expanded eligibility for the earned income tax credit.

Addressing Parenting Disputes Between Estranged Parents Through Community Mediation

Mediation provides a means of resolving disputes that promises to reduce litigation while avoiding further damage to party relationships. The present study addressed the question whether parents engaged in parenting disputes generated by divorce or separation received the promised benefits of mediation when services were delivered by means of community mediation, which combined the dual features of free services and volunteer mediators. Reported outcomes such as agreements, party satisfaction, relationship changes, and court involvement, as well as the connection between these outcomes and party factors of custodial status and income level, were examined, and several encouraging trends emerged. Results indicated that an economically diverse group of disputing parents were provided access to mediation services delivered under community mediation. Moreover, the prospect of avoiding litigation motivated a majority of parents to participate in community mediation. The positive outcomes reported by most parents, irrespective of income level and custodial status, included agreement and process satisfaction rates consistent with national trends, the development of parenting plans, and for a sizable minority of parents, reduced court involvement and improved between-parent interactions. However, non-custodial parents tended to be significantly more positive about mediation’s helpfulness with parenting issues than were custodial parents.

Mass Incarceration, Family Complexity, and the Reproduction of Childhood Disadvantage

In this article we examine the link between family complexity—measured by noncustodial parenthood and multiple-partner fertility—and incarceration. In 2012, close to 2.6 million children, or roughly one in twenty-five minors, had a parent in jail or prison. The risk of having a parent currently or ever incarcerated is disproportionately concentrated among black children and children of high school dropouts, many of whom are noncustodial parents. Variation in question wording, differences in length of exposure to parental incarceration, and the measurement of residential parenthood in household-based sample surveys converge to produce different estimates of race and class inequality in having a parent currently or ever incarcerated, when compared to similar estimates of parental incarceration from inmate surveys. Drawing on data from multiple sources and the development of a new method for the estimation of multiple-partner fertility among inmates, we consider how race and class inequality in parental incarceration may contribute to family complexity and the reproduction of childhood disadvantage.

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.

The Obligations of High-Income Parents

The Child Support Guidelines, incentivized by federal law, provide rebuttable guidance for setting child support awards, except in low- and high-income cases. This article focuses on the latter, as states continue to grapple with the question of whether the child should receive a proportion of the noncustodial parent’s income regardless of its amount, or whether there should be another limit. This article traces the narrative of child support obligations in high-income cases by considering the development of the economic aspect to the parent-child relationship, as well as the purpose and nature of the child support system. The resulting insights are especially useful for states seeking consistency in child support award decisions.

Tax Incentive Proposals to Enhance Child Support Payment Compliance and Tax Progressivity

Currently, $38 billion in child support payments is due custodial parents in the United States. The purpose of this study is to investigate the public policy and theoretical economic implications associated with tax incentive proposals for child support payments. Institutional theory and economic modeling theoretically support this investigation. Overall, the study suggests that a tax incentive associated with child support payments would enhance tax progressivity and reduce income inequality while also enhancing non-custodial parent ability to pay their child support legal mandates. A tax incentive may also enhance child support payer perceptions of procedural and retributive justice.

Ein Fall von Eltern-Kind Entfremdung

The clinical term "Parental Alienation Syndrome" (PAS) was introduced in 1984 by Richard Gardner, an American psychiatrist. Gardner described PAS and its symptoms, as a personality disorder, which appears chiefly in connection to child custody disputes wherein a child turns suddenly and massively against the non-custodial parent without reasonable grounds for doing so. This action by the child is a result of the custodial parent's emotionally abusive attempts to incite the child against the non-custodial parent.Where the child's rejection is based on some real past experience, there is not PAS. PAS only occurs as a result of the custodial parent's actions. Despite intensive effort, PAS was not included in the new DSM-V. In this case, a particularly impressive case history of parental alienation is described and discussed.

Hacia un sistema de filiación que consagre facultades y derechos específicos para el padre no custodio

This paper criticizes the way in which our legal system assigns custody of children. Mostly articulated from sources of comparative law, it presents a system of powers and rights for the non-custodial parent, which is respectful of the principle of equality of parents, which in turn is comprised in the principle of the best interests of the child. The Chilean system is analysed concerning the changes introduced by the recent reform of 2013. Family law – Custody – parenthood

Unintended consequences of welfare reform for children with single parents: a theoretical analysis

This paper formulates a model to examine the effects of changes in tax-benefit policy on the behavior of divorced parents and the well-being of children in single-parent households. Noncustodial parents choose the level of a child support payment to transfer to custodians. These, in turn, decide over child good expenditures and the allocation of time between market work and parenting. Our main finding shows that welfare policies that subsidize childcare expenditures or reduce withdrawal rates, which are most certainly intended to improve the conditions of working single parents and their children, could actually have the reverse effect.