Does Child Support Really Support Children?

The goal of the child support system is to ensure that children receive the financial support they need and deserve from their parents even when the parents are living apart. A new report from National Parents Organization (NPO) calls into question the effectiveness of our current child support system in promoting children’s well-being. Indeed, the report alleges, in many states the current child support laws are detrimental to children’s best interests.

The new research from NPO focuses on the way states’ child support guidelines either facilitate shared parenting or create barriers to it. The groundbreaking NPO report, 2022 NPO Child Support and Shared Parenting Report Card, grades each state on eight metrics measuring how their child support guidelines allocate child support funds between the children’s two homes when the separated parents are sharing substantially in raising their children.

The study found that nine states’s guidelines treat shared physical custody as if one parent cared for the children 100% of the time. This means that parents paying child support will presumptively pay the same amount whether they never care for their children or have their children with them 50% of the time. These states received an ‘F’ in NPO’s report card.

Among the states that do have guideline provisions for dividing the combined financial resources between the children’s two homes, the average grade was a ‘D+’. States scoring poorly often had unjustifiably high thresholds before the child support funds would be divided between the parents’ households—some as high as 49% of the parenting time. Many states’ guidelines create significant “cliff effects”—making large differences in child support orders turn on insignificant differences in parenting time. NPO claims that such cliff effects have no economic justification and cause unnecessary and harmful parental conflict.

Only four states received grades in the ‘A’ range: California, Florida, Kentucky, and Michigan. Eight states received grades in the ‘B’ range: Arizona, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Colorado, Oregon, and Indiana. The vast majority of states received grades in the ‘D’ and ‘F’ ranges.

“This shows that many states have a very long way to go in order to make their child support system truly be in children’s best interest,” said NPO Chair, Don Hubin. “Forty years of scientific research has shown that, when parents live apart, children usually do best when the parents are equally involved in the day-to-day care of the children. Our child support system should be encouraging shared parenting. Unfortunately, it is often creating needless and harmful barriers to the parenting arrangement that’s best for kids.”

In addition to the Report, NPO has published a map that shows each state's grade and the basis for that grade.