The child should be supported by a minimum livable amount (part of its rent + food + education + expenses). Instead there are crazy amounts based on the lifestyle the spouse was used to.
Funnily, if you were rich and go broke, you don't get to ask welfare or an employee to give you a salary based on the "lifestyle you were used to".
Again it's based on what the child was used to. Y'all are hyper fixated on the spouse I'm getting heavy reddit vibes here I'm expecting to start hearing about hypergamy and age of consent any minute now.
So? Why should the child get "what it was used to" and not a mere comfortamble amount? Especially if the father had a change of luck and makes less post-divorce?
I don't see any concern for kids from families that have not gone through divorce, but have gone broke or bankrupt. I don't see the state or anyone coming to pay them money to "maintain their lifestyle".
Why is this "lifestyle maintainance" only applicable to kids of divorced parents?
And why are children who started life poor less deserving of such money? They're just as capable as kids from rich parents to "get used" to a more luxurious lifestyle, they just never had the chance.
I actually am concerned about all of those things! Everyone should have their needs met, at the expense of those who have more than enough to meet their needs.
It's not really relevant to this conversation though, which is about the children of divorced parents, and how we've chosen to mediate their rights under the current system.
The problem with what I think you're proposing is who gets to decide what is a reasonable minimum amount for a given area? or a comfortable amount? Have you seen the poverty line calculations, or the asset limitations on disabled people? The state is not good at carrying this responsibility.
The current system leaves it up to the parents. Not what the parents say they want post-separation, but how they actually acted. That's why it's based on pre-split allocations.
>It's not really relevant to this conversation though, which is about the children of divorced parents, and how we've chosen to mediate their rights under the current system.
Things are to be examined in context, relatively to similar concerns, and to societies priorities and decisions at large, not as isolated domains. At the very least one should ask why this class of people deserves more than another, why their "lifestyle level" is relevant and is not for other cases and so on.
>The problem with what I think you're proposing is who gets to decide what is a reasonable minimum amount for a given area?
The area shouldn't matter. Use minimum wage as a calculation. If they kid is supposed to live on that while working their ass off as an adult, they can live on that as a kid too, especially since they still have a parent they live with to supplement that. If minimum wage is too low, the lawmakers should raise it for adults too.
Then the child should stay with the parent most able to provide for them. The big issue a lot of people have with the inequity of child support is that fathers who want custody of their kids are continually denied it by the state.
Involved, stay-at-home, full time fathers are given at best 50% custody and then a hefty child support obligation and told to go out and get a job. Uninvolved mothers are given primary custody by default and then collect a massive paycheck as a result.
Sure, but in the US the courts almost always gives custody to the mother, and then the father only gets to see his kids on weekends or less, and he has to pay for the privilege in forms of said support.
This isn't remotely true. Custody tends towards mothers because men often don't pursue joint custody. In cases where they do legally pursue it, they get it more often than not.
And again you're mistaking the fundamental nature and intention of child support. It's not a fee for the privilege of seeing your child. A parent can pay less child support by having the child more. Family court judges are fairly progressive and like this. Their explicit target is 50/50 joint custody in cases that allow for it. Men are simply less often willing to prioritize eg daily school transportation requirements vs their job.
1. In 51% of child custody cases, both parents agree for the mother to be the custodial parent.
6. 79.9% of custodial parents in the United States were mothers.
The math doesn't add up, assuming this is correct.
>Their explicit target is 50/50 joint custody in cases that allow for it.
I just discovered this was the case in my state at least. This is good to hear. In the 80s when I was growing up, it wasn't; it was more like I described earlier.
In the past, women were the most likely to win a custody battle because they were considered the primary caregivers of their children, as most fathers spent the most time outside the household because of their work schedules. Although the current share of custodial mothers is still bigger than that of custodial fathers, recent divorce child custody statistics tell us that the number of custodial fathers has soared over the past few years.
In the US this varies widely by state, My state requires non-married fathers to take additional legal action in signing an additional document declaring parentage before they are allowed on a birth certificate in the first place.
