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"Let's Do This Instead of Child Support"
There are many reasons to use traditional
child support between parents after divorce:
 | It's a simple mathematical calculation in nearly every state.
Although there are always judgment calls (for example, dealing with
Mom's and Dad's incomes), the calculation of child support is remarkably
objective in most states and in most cases. |
| It's simple to administer. Most child support payors pay child
support by income withholding order. The money gets taken out of their
paycheck just like taxes. They get accustomed to it, the money is there
each month on a reliable schedule, and life is simpler for everyone.
Even for parents who choose to make payments directly, the certainty of
a monthly payment helps everyone know what to expect and requires no
negotiation. |
| It's simple to collect child
support. Every state has procedures to locate delinquent child
support payors and get them back on a payment schedule, and an
increasing number of states impose interest on unpaid child support,
giving parents an extra incentive to stay current. |
| Judges like it. For the same reason that people in business once
said "nobody gets fired for buying IBM," we can now say "no judge gets
reversed for ordering guideline child support." The child support
guidelines offer a safe haven for judges who want to ease their
administrative burden, and as a result, almost all judges routinely
order guideline child support whenever possible. |
That having been said. in the world of
cooperative divorce where I
live and work, it's not at all unusual for one parent (usually the one who
would normally be paying guideline child support) to say to the other,
"let's do this other thing instead of child support." Maybe they will
share all expenses 50/50. Maybe one parent will provide a residence or
make a house payment or car payment in lieu of child support. Or maybe
they will just agree to share expenses on a mutually agreeable basis.
There are many noble reasons why one parent may suggest this to the
other. They may be hoping that the alternative arrangement will avoid the
coldness of guideline child support. They may be recoiling from the
drudgery of a fixed monthly payment and requesting instead a meaningful
parenting role in the lives of their children. They may be longing for
additional flexibility, so both parents will be able to help when and how
they can best serve and can respond to the unexpected needs of the
children without needing to go through lawyers and judges to do it.
There's a more subtle (and I believe, more common) reason, however, why
many parents suggest alternatives to child support:
They want to continue to
control the other parent, and they want to pay less money to do it.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would encourage custodial parents to be
suspicious of and resistant to any arrangement in lieu of child support.
There's just too high an incidence of parents taking advantage of the
arrangement. Here are the ways I've seen these arrangements fail:
| The parents plan to have the children spend equal time with both parents,
but in reality, one parent ends up being more flexible and more responsible
than the other and spends more time with the children. This causes that
parent's expenses to increase, with no child support to cover them. |
| The parents sign a "mutual agreement" arrangement for the expenses of the
children, but one parent routinely objects to expenses the other parent
considers important, leaving the other parent with the unpleasant choice of
paying all the expense or depriving the child. |
| Or "mutual agreement" morphs into the need for one parent always to ask
the other parent for money, giving the parent who's being asked for money
inappropriate control over the life of his or her divorced spouse. |
| The parents agree for one to pay a fixed expense like a house payment or a
car payment for the other, but the one responsible for paying doesn't come
through, leaving the other parent with the asset at risk and no child support. |
| The parents plan to share expenses for the children, but one of them is
perennially short on cash, leaving the other to fill in the slack and no easy
way to record the failure to pay. |
The good news is that when we figure out these arrangements aren't working,
it's generally easy to get most judges to order guideline child support going
forward. The problem is that by the time it comes to that, one parent feels used
by the other, and the children suffer. Why not avoid all that angst and
heartache, and just do guideline child support from the beginning?
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