Balancing The Scales For Support Of Every Child

Welcome to the Fathers for Equal Rights Child Support Information Center. Here at Fathers for Equal Rights we believe that every parent, be they non-custodial or custodial, has a duty to financially and emotionally support his or her children. We believe financial support should be provided for the child by both parents equitably without bankrupting either one and include meaningful visitation and fair treatment of the child(ren).

This website and Fathers for Equal Rights in no manner advocates non-payment of child support or condones those who ignore or evade his or her obligation. We do however want to educate non-custodial parents paying child support to protect themselves against unfair and inflated judgments while balancing the scales on fair and equitable support in the best interest of the child.

A general outline of this section is listed on the right for your convenience. For additional and more detailed things you may need to lean about with regard to child support issues, will require taking a detailed look at the articles available for your learning and review. The titles include general information which you will find helpful and further discussions with regard to State Codes that apply here in Texas as well as in other states. If you feel that you need additional help, it may be a topic for discussion with one of our staff or attorneys. If you don't see what you are looking forin the list above, please be sure to contact us here at the Fathers For Equal Rights Child Support Information Center office at 214 953-2233 for more information.

Since this area of the website applies to a large number of people across many state, you are invited to return on a regular basis for the latest and most current information about the issues with regard to Child Support. Proper education, information, and action by parents and attorney's means you will have the greatest degree of success in keeping your children moving forward toward the future of their lives in the best possible manner. Proper support is critical to them developing as vital members in school, home, and family life.

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The Office of the Attorney General (O.A.G.) is designated as the title IV-D agency for the State of Texas. Every state has a title IV-D agency. As the official child support enforcement agency, the O.A.G. provides services to parents who wish to obtain or provide support for their children. The Child Support Division, recently renamed the Division for Families and Children, determines on a case-by-case basis, which of the following child support services is appropriate:

• Locating a non-custodial parent
• Establishing paternity
• Establishing and enforcing child support orders
• Establishing and enforcing medical support orders
• Reviewing and adjusting child support payments
• Collecting and distributing child support payments

To Apply for Services

Contact your local child support field office or call 1-800-252-8014 and receive an application by mail. You can also apply online at www.oag.state.tx.us

O.A.G. Child Support Field Office Structure

Each office has a managing attorney and several other attorneys, an office manager, an ombudsman (information person and complaint department), and several caseworkers. Most offices are open Monday - Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. A few offices have Saturday hours, usually by appointment only. There are eight regions of the O.A.G. for the State of Texas with several offices in each region and a main regional office with a regional attorney, administrator, and ombudsman. You are welcome to call Fathers for Equal Rights, Inc.'s main office at (214) 953-2233 for information on the O.A.G. field office in your location.

Standardized Guidelines

The O.A.G. provides in their process of establishing new orders, an opportunity for both parties to come to an agreement in a settlement conference at the field office of the O.A.G.. This is an opportunity for mom and dad to mediate/negotiate the terms of conservatorship, visitation, domicile restriction, transportation, child support, and medical support. The O.A.G. will present to both parties a very standardized Order Establishing the Parent-Child Relationship. Fathers for Equal Rights, Inc. strongly suggest that you call or stop by one of our offices, also read sections 153 and 154 of the Texas Family Code prior to the settlement conference.

Suggestions/Information

1. Both parents should be Joint Managing Conservators.
2. The domicile of a child can be restricted to a specific county.
3. Visitation should not be restricted simply because the child is less than 3 years old.
4. Retroactive (back) child support is not mandatory.
5. All periods of possession (visitation) may begin at the time school recesses and end at the time school resumes. (i.e. Monday and Friday mornings) Review sections 153.312(a)(2) and 153.315(a) and (b) of the Texas Family Code.
6. Visitation schedules can be adjusted around work schedules. If you work weekends and your days off are Tuesday and Wednesday than make Tuesday and Wednesdays your "weekends". Review 153.253 of the Texas Family Code.
7. Transportation of the children can be shared equally. The receiving parent does the driving. Review 153.316(1) and (3)(a) of the Texas Family Code.
8. If you lose your job or for any other reason that you may get behind in your child support, contact the local field office of the O.A.G. They will work with you. Ask them for a "child support review process."
9. The O.A.G. does not enforce visitation. Contact Fathers for Equal Rights, Inc. at (214) 953-2233 or your counties Domestic Relations Office if your county provides one.
10. The O.A.G. does not represent either party at any time. The O.A.G. only represents the State of Texas.
11. The O.A.G. should only collect child support from one employer. Contact your field office if you get a part-time job and that employer receives a Wage Withholding Order.

by K.C. Wilson

Child support has always been contentious and always will be. Determining whether it is fair or reasonable starts with its purpose. What should laws that set child support address and seek to accomplish?

Child support could be to simply cover the real costs of a child and ensure reasonable needs are met. It could be to insulate children from any economic impact of divorce, or sustain the standard of living of the custodial household at its pre-divorce level. Each implies different provisions, and different measures for whether they work.

Few have trouble with who should meet whatever purpose, or how: both parents, in proportion to their means. Yet 13 states use a child support formula, called Percentage of Obligor, that ignores the custodial parent's income, so even that assumption is not safe.

The objective is often taken for granted when it should be the founding statement and measure of any law. At issue is society's responsibility to protect its members, versus creating financial incentive for divorce. Divorce per se should carry neither financial punishment nor reward for either party.

Put like that, you'd think public policy would only be to ensure normal child costs are met. If either parent gives more, so much the better, but imposing more would create an unnatural reward for divorce and custody. We would create divorce for profit and drive those fathers further away who left their family out of shame from being unable to support them in the first place.

Income Shares is the child support formula used by 30 states. It's name comes from it's stated objective: to ensure that any child has the same "share" of each parent's income available for its care as if its parents were married. This proportionateley accounts for two incomes, so should be fair, and sounds noble. Children should be protected from any effect of divorce at all cost; the effect on any parent is irrelevant. Except that anything that effects either parent will eventually effect the children.

Income is not simply made available but provided, whether needed at any one time or not, and through only one parent. The purpose is not to ensure the equal presence of both parents so as to ensure that availability of incomes, only the incomes, irrespective of real need. This can be insufficient in some cases and too much in others. Further, since one-third of children born in the US are born outside of marriage it assumes a lower level of pre-existing costs for those parents than probably existed. There was no pre-divorce single household, so Income Shares can result in unsustainable child support.

Most of the public is unaware of the change in policy in the 1980s. Child support is no longer child support, but support of a standard of living, ostensibly for the child, but coincidentally enjoyed by the custodial parent. This is of great benefit to custodial parents, but of questionable value to children. It effectively combines child support with alimony and injects it into all cases instead of keeping them distinct with alimony only for select ones. It also allows today's child support formulas to ignore the real costs of children and the reality of two households, in favor of less contestable incomes.

Here's how it works in practice: Government figures show that a household with a gross income of $13,500 a year ($1,125 a month) will spend, on average, $700 a month on two children. If both parents make the same and the father has no time with the children, you'd expect his child support to be half that: $350 a month.

But in a typical state such as Virginia, a father of two making $6.50 an hour and whose ex-wife makes the same (both gross $1,125 a month) pays $540 a month in child support. After that and taxes, including credits for children only the mother can claim, he takes home $388 a month (half the poverty level), and she nets $1,193 after child costs. She gets more than her gross earnings, after taxes, support, and the costs of the children.

In California, if he is making $75,000 a year, and she, $35,000, he pays $1,250 a month for two children that cost $1,150 a month.¹Before child costs, he winds up with a net income of $34,000 to her $44,000. She gets 30% above her gross income before child costs. If he has only 20% of the children's time, he will have similar total real child costs, but though he makes twice as much, nets a quarter less on which to meet those costs.

The difference in net incomes comes from, not only the transfer payments, but the many tax benefits for which no formula accounts that are only accorded custodial parents even though both are equally single parents.

How did this happen and how desirable is it? Perhaps more important is whether it's what was intended.

In the 1980s, women's groups lobbied for a standard-of-living criteria for whether divorces turn out fairly. A divorce is fair if neither party suffers either a large increase or decrease in standard of living.

It was not explained why, between any two unmarried people, a similar standard of living should be expected, but a major issue of the day was female financial independence: the ability of women to earn as much as men. It was also never established why correcting this should fall on the shoulders of individual men instead of society as a whole. There were unsubstantiated claims that divorce was profitable for men, instead of having different abilities to earn, but although there are certainly cases where alimony is justified, making divorce profitable for women, especially those already with their own income, is a dubious solution.

Child support became the vehicle for post-divorce equalization only because most children are assigned solely to the mother. It was imagined that whatever the mother suffered, the children suffered as much, a direct relationship that can also be questioned.

The perceived solution for women (and hence, children) suffering economically from divorce in some cases was a new objective for child support in all cases that included custodial parents, predicated on their marital standard of living. Child support became a vehicle for income redistribution, and child support agencies and advocates are overt about it. A father who objects is a deadbeat or oppressor.

As a policy, it carries several anomalies.

1. It assumes that divorce leaves one single parent instead of two, each with nearly as much in direct child care costs. That is, it assumes every case is a sole custody case producing only one parent and household. This leaves the non-custodial parent supporting one and a half households, and the custodial parent, half of one. It can therefore impose a one-parent outcome in many cases as it can deprive the non-custodial parent of the resources to equally sustain a household to which his children can equally spend even a day.
2. The economic assumption produces a psychological impact. The assumption of no other active parent is a signal that the non-custodial parent's contact with the children is considered irrelevant. Assuming his absence economical encourages it in fact. Fathers, many already suffering emotionally from a divorce that was not their idea, are discouraged from being fathers by not being treated as an equal parent.
3. With child support set in excess of the real costs of children, a custodial parent often need make no contribution.
4. As a policy for financial independence of women, it creates financial dependence.
5. As a policy for equalizing women economically, it counts on women to always get sole custody. Whether that is a desirable public policy is open to debate.
6. While in general it may be true that men have more income than women, in cases where it is not true but the same policy is applied, it creates the inequities in the opposite direction it sought to remove. A recent study found that 35% of custodial parents earn more, not less, than their non-custodial counterpart.

Income redistribution (rob the rich and give to the poor) can be a valid objective when judiciously applied at the macro-economic level. Perfect competition only exists as a model, while in reality inequities develop such as the rich getting richer, not because of increased productivity but the nature of money to attract more money. Also, a social group can find themselves economically disadvantages for historical reasons. So one purpose of taxes and public spending is to ensure the benefits of an economy are more evenly spread.

No economist has ever advanced income redistribution at the micro level -- applied between any two people -- exactly because it can only result in the inequities described above. It is an example of what economists call the fallacy of composition: because something can work at one scale is no reason to apply it at another. At the micro level, the composition of "the community" becomes highly volatile (those "any two people" could be, well, any two people), so the desired effect is less reliably achieved.

Even a right solution, applied at the wrong place, will only create greater problems. Child support as income redistribution can only transfer poverty, not solve it, and increase both divorces and fatherless children.

Child support would do better to assume no greater ambition than cover normal child costs. It would serve children better, which it is what it's supposed to do, not adult needs nor other social or economic agendas.

¹ Standard child costs are taken from the Cost Shares formula devised by Guideline Economics of Atlanta, GA., which adapts them from Department of Agriculture figures. The only adaptation is conversion of some values from per capita to marginal, due to their different use. Average income of the parents is used to index into these tables instead of combined income because, after divorce, there is no combined household.

The above is from "Male Nurturing," "The Multiple Scandals of Child Support" and other e-books on family and men's issues, by K.C. Wilson. Copyright (c) 2001 Harbinger Press. Reprinted with permission, all rights reserved.