I get tired of the trite argument that a man needs to support his kids. First of all, why is it suddenly the governments business how I choose to support my kids. Why is it as a man married to the mother of my children, I have freedom, but if I am not married to her, I do not. This sets the stage for what no man wants to admit. We are disposable. We don’t matter. Society does not value us. Our freedom is either determined by either having no children or the type of connection we have with the mother of our children. Once there are children involved, then their mother has almost all the say in the amount of freedom we have. She can often decide the nature of the relationship you will have with your children. She can decide if you are her wage slave through the children. If you were never married to her, you have even less power in how these things are decided. I cannot explain how heavy the burden is of paying child support. If you have never had to pay child support, then you will not understand. I hope that you never do. Many men just accept it, and move on. It is the way things are. I for some reason cannot do that. I am not built that way, I guess. I cannot get over the fact that my value in my kids life is boiled down to some fraction of my salary. This is what matters most. Worst of all, none of this gets checked by higher courts. Divorce court isn’t truly a court of law, though they have been given legal authority to rule on many aspects of our life. It is also sad that so much of this revolves around the amount of time you spend with your kids. The kids standard of living becomes the business of the court in the USA. A lot of evil has come from this idea.
Lets examine CS a little bit. I will use my case for sample numbers, but I will be running some different scenarios as I use these numbers. Mom earns $57,000 and Dad earn $90,000 for this example. We have four kids where one between 6 and 11 and three between 12 and 18. We will assume that for tax estimates purposes that The dad’s tax rate is around 30% and the Mom’s is around 25%.
MOM HAS FULL RESIDENTIAL CUSTODY:
| Dad | Dad Totals | Mom | Mom Totals | ||
| Salary | $7,500.00 | $7,500.00 | $4,750.00 | $4,750.00 | |
| Estimated Taxes | -$2,250.00 | $5,250.00 | -$1,187.50 | $3,562.50 | |
| Child Support | -$2,404.00 | $2,846.00 | $2,404.00 | $5,966.50 |
Mom is responsible for 100% of direct expenses which currently seem to be school related expenses only.
Dad is responsible for 60% of health related costs and mom is responsible for 40%
Mom is responsible for clothing
This scenario is where most men currently land. They may have equal time, but the term given to it is liberal visitation. Mom has roughly $72K/year to spend as she pleases. This is the equivalent of someone who earns $93K/year. Dad on the other hand has roughly $34K/year to spend as he pleases. This is the equivalent of someone who earns $43K/year. Some people might think, not bad for a single guy. There is only one problem. He is still more responsible for medical costs than mom is. There is also very little he can do to enforce that mom provide enough clothing for the kids when they are at his house, and he has to maintain a house that is large enough for all these kids or he won’t be allowed near equal time. Here is the other problem. She has 100% of the decision making power, because she has all the money to spend for the kids. Forget all the mess about shared legal custody. Its the person who pays the bills who gets the say in this world. Dad has been relegated to baby sitter in his kids lives, or at least legally that is what he is. The rest is up to mom. It is rare, but yes the reverse could happen the following table shows the numbers if dad has full residential custody. Mom ends of with the spending power of someone who earns around $30K/year, and dad ends up with the spending power of someone who earns around $106K/year. Its no where near the imbalance that you see when money goes from the lesser earner to the greater earner, but I would argue that is equally as unfair. The Dad then become responsible for clothes and direct expenses and the split on health care stays the same.
| Dad | Dad Totals | Mom | Mom Totals | ||
| Salary | $7,500.00 | $7,500.00 | $4,750.00 | $4,750.00 | |
| Estimated Taxes | -$2,250.00 | $5,250.00 | -$1,187.50 | $3,562.50 | |
| Child Support | $1,524.00 | $6,774.00 | -$1,524.00 | $2,038.50 |
MOM AND DAD HAVE SHARED RESIDENTIAL CUSTODY:
| Dad | Dad Totals | Mom | Mom Totals | ||
| Salary | $7,500.00 | $7,500.00 | $4,750.00 | $4,750.00 | |
| Estimated Taxes | -$2,250.00 | $5,250.00 | -$1,187.50 | $3,562.50 | |
| Child Support | -$1,147.00 | $4,103.00 | $1,147.00 | $4,709.50 |
Mom is responsible for 100% of direct expenses which currently seem to be school related expenses only.
Dad is responsible for 60% of health related costs and mom is responsible for 40%
Mom is responsible for clothing
This scenario is better. Mom has the spending power of someone earning $71K/year and dad has the spending power of someone earning $62K/year. Typically the man is held to account for extra-curricular activities here. Usually split or at the same percentage as health care. This is something that in the above scenario is usually true, but its not enforced. I have found that it is marginally cheaper for the dad, because there are more expenses, and now he must have a home large enough for everyone. What we have is a major income shift for a minimal amount of expenses. It doesn’t look like much, but spread it across the year and you have over $7K/year difference. The expenses related directly to public schooling are not that expensive. They are probably half of that or just a little more if you are paying for school lunches, which depending on your agreement and judge may or may not be considered a direct expense. It certainly is possible for mom to decide that lunches will be packed, and transfer the expense of providing lunches to the dad on dad’s days with the kids regardless of how it is interpreted by the judge. There is a better balance in this scenario. She can still choose not to provide enough clothing, and you are left with little recourse, but to purchase clothing on your own. What is most bothersome is that she is never actually responsible for children’s expenses. Dad pays mom to then pay her portion, and then dad pays his portion. The expenses of the children are 100% covered by the father, and the father supplements the lifestyle of the mother’s household while also supporting his own. Shared residency in my state requires that the higher earner pay child support unless the court rules otherwise. The court almost never does, but if it did, she would $0 in child support to the father.
MOM AND DAD HAVE SHARED RESIDENTIAL CUSTODY AND EACH PARENT BUYS CLOTHING:
| Dad | Dad Totals | Mom | Mom Totals | ||
| Salary | $7,500.00 | $7,500.00 | $4,750.00 | $4,750.00 | |
| Estimated Taxes | -$2,250.00 | $5,250.00 | -$1,187.50 | $3,562.50 | |
| Child Support | -$1,068.00 | $4,182.00 | $1,068.00 | $4,630.50 |
Mom is responsible for 100% of direct expenses which currently seem to be school related expenses only.
Dad is responsible for 60% of health related costs and mom is responsible for 40%
It gets better. This is about the same as above with the exception you now have to buy clothing for the kids as the father. For 4 kids this is $79/month. This is not a lot, but realistically it would meet the basic needs for having the kids half the time. Again if you flip who pays direct expenses then Dad gets $0 in child support. Mom has the spending power of someone who earns around $70K/year and dad has the spending power of someone who earns about $63K/year.
MOM AND DAD HAVE SHARED RESIDENTIAL CUSTODY AND EACH PARENT BUYS CLOTHING AND THEY SHARE DIRECT EXPENSES:
| Dad | Dad Totals | Mom | Mom Totals | ||
| Salary | $7,500.00 | $7,500.00 | $4,750.00 | $4,750.00 | |
| Estimated Taxes | -$2,250.00 | $5,250.00 | -$1,187.50 | $3,562.50 | |
| Child Support | -$440.00 | $4,810.00 | $440.00 | $4,002.50 |
Dad is responsible for 60% of health related costs and mom is responsible for 40%
Dad is responsible for 60% of direct expenses and mom is responsible for 40%
This one is the most telling. Basically it says that dad, because he makes more money is responsible for paying mom $440/month or just over $5K/year to improve her lifestyle. In our life this is about the same as the kids typical expenses would be with extra-curricular activities. Mom has the spending power of someone who earns $60K/year and dad has the spending power of someone who earns $72K/year. What stands out to me, is she is never required to spend any of her own earned money on the children. She gets the money from dad to spend on the kids, and then dad also has to pay.
Why Does it Matter
There are plenty of reasons that CS is evil. There is the aspect that it indentures the father to the mother until the children are grown. Understand this isn’t an overstatement. This was its intent. CS started in an era where women were responsible for raising the kids with the man’s resources. A woman who was divorced was not going to be able to raise the kids. If a man abandoned his family, then the state was saying he was going to be held to account for them. This was also an era where if the man divorced the woman, and chose to keep the kids, he would be allowed to, and she would have to find her own way. None of this fits the modern era. Men are active parents. I would argue that they always were to some degree. It was only in the early years that men didn’t take an active role in the child rearing. Men and women may have had very different roles in raising children, but men were active. If they weren’t then there would be far fewer fond memories written about and shared about fathers. CS ultimately delivers the power to the recipient. They are given the power of the other person’s pocketbook, and its enforced by the power of the state. This is evil. For the government to decide, in a free society, that one person matters more than another is evil. CD tells one parent that your kids are going to cost you a specific amount of money based on what you earn, and the other parent is going to determine how to spend that. The other parent has no accountability as to how much they actually spend on the children, and a frugal woman can keep most of the money for her own use. The argument that all the money benefits the child may be true, but it is equally true that if the father kept the money in a shared residency circumstance. Its just that the mother doesn’t benefit. It is also evil that the party that chooses to terminate the relationship stands to benefit from the other party in the termination.
I want to play with the numbers some more. I want to see what point does her raising her income become a benefit. Just a cursory glance shows that she would need a significant jump in income to make up for the lost child support with an increase. Since increasing her income would mean working more hours and having more responsibility, there is significant friction to her taking any action to better her life on her own. Only a woman who is long sighted enough to realize that the money falls off quickly, and they will have to live off what they earn when the kids are grown will see the benefit of earning enough to eliminate most of the child support that is paid to them. Look for a future number crunching post to show how that might play out.
Ten-Foured,
JeD
