NPO ISSUE | CHILD SUPPORT

More than 50% of obligor parents are pushed below the poverty line by unrealistic child support obligations that prove impossible for them to meet & prevent them from fully participating in raising their children

 

Children require significant financial resources in order to flourish, and both parents have an obligation to provide this form of support. These truths motivate support for the child support program.

A FAILED SYSTEM

Unfortunately, the current child support system is poorly designed to promote children’s interests. In many states, child support policies do not promote shared parenting, which is usually in children’s best interest. Instead, they create disincentives to shared parenting.

ADVERSE EFFECTS

More than 50% of obligor parents are pushed below the poverty line by unrealistic child support obligations that prove impossible for them to meet and prevent them from fully participating in raising their children. Parents who lack the ability, not the willingness, to comply with child support orders are frequently subjected to sanctions that should be reserved for child support evaders

 HOW NPO IS ADDRESSING THIS ISSUE

Our research is showing states how child support can be structured to support kids by encouraging shared parenting.

 

Children require significant financial resources in order to flourish, and both parents have an obligation to provide this form of support. These truths motivate support for the child support program. NPO supports reasonable child support obligations that are based on the expected costs of raising a child and apportioned between the child’s two households based on the expected child-related expenses in each home. NPO opposes child support laws and policies that create deterrents to shared parenting, which has been shown to be in children’s best interest in most cases.

Our Work

  • In a first of its kind study, NPO published the 2022 NPO Child Support and Shared Parenting Report Card, which examined in detail the child support guidelines of each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, grading them on the degree to which they encourage or discourage shared parenting.

  • Through its research, NPO has identified a number of problems with the current child support guidelines and policies. These problems and proposed solutions to them are outlined in its NPO Issues in Child Support booklet.

ADVERSE EFFECTS

  • To illustrate the wide variations in child support orders between states and the degree to which they diverge from what would be ordered based on estimated costs of raising a child, NPO produced this map, on which we present for each state two financial figures applicable to a specific scenario.

  • NPO is working with legislators and child support officials at both state and federal levels to improve the child support system.