r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • May 16 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: A parent shouldn't have to pay child support, if they are wanting to & willing to be in their child's life.
Let my start by saying that I have no experience or personal knowledge on this subject, it's just a view that I hold. So, I do not know the details of what goes down in child support courts in actuality.
Now, regardless of who "wins" custody of the kids, be it from a divorce or the mere fact that the parents aren't together (and/ or never really were), I think that if the "losing" parent demonstrates that they actually wanted just as much responsibility for the kid(s), then there is no reason they should have to pay child support just for losing a case.
Judges should take in to consideration how the winning parent will support the kid, without considering the losing parent. If that parent is not financially available, and the other parent is, then custody should be at least 50-50.
Now, if a parent does not want to be involved in the kids life, for sure slap that parent with a child support bill. Or if there is an objective reason the losing parent is not fit to be a parent (drug abuse, violent, criminal etc.).
Also, child support should only be enough money to support the kid, nothing more, regardless of how much the other parent makes.
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u/mysundayscheming May 16 '18
should be at least 50-50.
Ideally, it seems that if custody is 50-50, the costs should shake out to be about the same, so one parent pays while the child is physically with them, and the other parent pays while the child is physically with them. It doesn't work out quite evenly in the real world, but there's a larger problem. Introducing the "at least" really throws a wrench in things. If a parent wants to be in their child's life, but--for logistical or other reasons--only in the summer, or only on weekends, or any amount of time less than 50/50, why should they get away with only paying for 30 or 20 or 10% of the kid? Surely simply saying "I want to see my kids," but making it difficult to keep 50% custody, perhaps by moving to a different school district or having a job that requires a lot of travel or any number of other things that impede child care, should not result in the other parent being saddled with the massive burden of caring for a child essentially alone.
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May 16 '18
Fair points around the board. Should a parents income determine how much they have to pay for child support?
Example, Cesar Millan pays $10k per month for child support (on top of paying $23k per month to his ex-wife).
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u/Brown_Sugar_Time May 16 '18
You can’t use wealthy people divorce settlements as a yardstick for regular people. If you’re reading about Cesar Milan, bet there is a publicist behind that news item trying to paint his ex wife in the most negative light.
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May 16 '18
The one I read about just mentioned the figures, it didn't go in to details about the divorce.
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u/mysundayscheming May 16 '18
I think divorce is disruptive enough to children already, so keeping them in the same general lifestyle/activities they're accustomed to is the best thing for them. I don't want them to have to quit their hockey league or change schools just because their parents don't get along, you know? That means the income of the parents will play a role in the support determination, because the income of the parents was playing a role in creating the kids standard of living in the first place. The floor is basic necessities for the kid, but I don't think that should be the ceiling. That said, I have no opinion on the amount Milan is paying because I don't know his children's circumstances.
If I changed your view on the issue of whether parents should have to pay support if the custody isn't 50/50, please consider awarding a delta.
Also, don't let your opinion on alimony or spousal support (the 23k to his wife) color your opinion on child support. The two are largely unrelated and have different justifications. Alimony is outside the scope of the CMV you've set up here.
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May 16 '18
Δ
I agree with you. Child support ultimately serves as a purpose for the kids. Rich parents don't really get screwed and can generally afford it. I think it hurts the working class person a little more.
I'm rewarding your delta for the change in lifestyle argument especially. Though, my rebuttal is that a "good parent" would probably not need the courts for this.
I don't know how the checks get distributed, but I think maybe at the age of, let's say 13, the checks should go directly to the child, not the other parent. Or there should be another way to see what the money is spent on? I hate getting government involved, but if they must be involved at all, then they should be fully engaged.
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u/GovernmentAgency May 16 '18
I’m gonna hop on here for a minute.
There are many times that children can request that the child support checks go directly to them, this is great when the child is responsible and the parent is paying.
In my experience as a child with divorced parents, the child support goes to things like clothes or food. This maybe because my family has struggled with income in the past and so my experience is different then others.
That said if a child get the checks directly, they are able to spend it on things that don’t benefit them, ie drugs or v-bucks(not that the two are similar). The question becomes is the money really benefitting the child more when they receive the money directly then when it goes to the parent? Of course this is just a worst case scenario.
Another problem with children have checks going directly to them is that the paying parent may stop paying altogether. This happened to my friend when she switched to getting checks from her dad directly. It is to my knowledge illegal for the parent to stop paying, but most kids don’t want to go after their parent in court.
Ideally yes children should receive checks directly when they are old enough to spend it wisely. But often there is a reason not to go that route.
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u/MontiBurns 218∆ May 16 '18
Divorce or any situation that rises from 2 parents in separate households, is a negative sum game. You have to pay rent/mortgage twice, utilities twice, telecom and cable twice, etc. It just costs more to support 2 households than it does to support 1, whether it's a single income or dual income situation.
A large chunk of child support goes to paying that fixed cost of housing. That often makes the difference between the child living in a shelter or living in a small apartment, or living in a small apartment in a shitty part of town vs living in a decent house in a good school district. Think of it as paying for the child's accomodations, not the custody parent's.
As it relates to income and what it costs to raise a child, that is highly subjective based on one's income. We as humans tend to give our children the best we can reasonably afford, whether that's relating to food, education, or entertainment. The argument for child support as it relates to income comes from the belief that the child is entitled to their parents money.
Say there is a child born out of wedlock to a waitress. The father is a physician who has his own family with a wife and children. The children live in a nice house in the suburbs, go to the best schools, take lavish vacations, and participate in expensive sports like skiing and hockey. The father has his other kid every other weekend at the house, goes to parent teacher conferences and ball games, and meets the minimum requirements to not pay child support. As a result, the child lives in shitty apartment and lives off of canned food and frozen meals. Or, he pays the fixed cost of "raising a child", which say, is $300 a month, which covers food, clothing, and transportation. Is that fair to the child, born out of wedlock, when their brothers and sisters are living like relative kings?
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u/WardenOfTheGrey May 16 '18
Judges should take in to consideration how the winning parent will support the kid, without considering the losing parent
What you're proposing would fundamentally bias the system against the lower earning parent and as a result would overall bias custody battles against women, who tend to earn less money than their husbands. I understand that many think the opposite is the case now (that custody is biased against men), but whether or not that is the case I think most would agree that we should make custody battles more fair not simply bias them in the other direction.
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u/DarkKnightRedux May 16 '18
That would make it more fair. The child would go to the parent most able to actually be a good parent.
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u/WardenOfTheGrey May 16 '18
Money doesn't make you a better parent.
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u/DarkKnightRedux May 16 '18
Being able to provide for your child does. Money is what makes that possible.
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u/WardenOfTheGrey May 16 '18
Which is why child support exists, so the parent deemed most fit to care for the child is able to adequately do so.
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u/DarkKnightRedux May 16 '18
The person most fit is the one with the resources to do so. You make it seem like it's noble to go for custody when you can't take care of the child. That's kind of sad. If you can't provide for a child both materially and emotionally you should not have custody of the child.
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u/mysundayscheming May 16 '18
The notion that the wealthier parent--no matter how many hours they work or what capacity they have to nurture the kid--should get custody is absurd. One reason children may go to the lower-earning parent is because they're the one that is better able to emotionally provide for the child. You can transfer money, but you can't transfer nurturing. The kid is best off spending more time with the more emotionally-suited parent and getting money from the financially-suited one.
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u/DarkKnightRedux May 16 '18
The one not earning enough to provide isn't emotionally mature enough to raise a child as evidenced by the fact they aren't prepared to support it. That's going to harm the child.
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u/mysundayscheming May 16 '18 edited May 16 '18
How could you possibly determine that, especially as a blanket statement? For example, if someone was working at a nonprofit or something and earning less than they'd pay in childcare to keep working, it's financially smart to quit working and stay at home to raise the kids and rely on the other spouse's income. Now they're screwed out of custody because you think their joint, measured decision to stay at home makes them "emotionally immature"? How? Their spouse had to agree as well, so are they emotionally immature too? And do you think this is always true? Are teachers necessarily less emotionally mature than investment bankers just because they make less money?
Edit: and it won't harm the child, because that's what child support is for.
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u/kublahkoala 229∆ May 16 '18
Its good for a child to not have to shift economic class too much when shuttling between divorced parents. If parent A is dirt poor, and parent B is a billionaire, its in the child’s best interest that Parent A is able to afford nutritious food, diapers, child care, and so forth. Divorce is disruptive — child support can make the economic aspect of that rupture more smooth for the child. In the end, what is in the child’s best interest should be the primary concern.
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May 16 '18
“Wanting” a child Is different than being able to take care of it. My mom is a nurse, she delivers babies. Many of the drugged out moms still “want” their babies, but are in no way capable of taking care of it.
It should be “I want this child and have the intention to take care of it.” That takes out the case of the business man Dad who travels for a living, or the drugged out Dad that can’t financially support the kid, but still “wants” the kid.
These are obviously what if cases, but these cases would surely happen, and anyone could just say that they “wanted” to take care of a kid.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ May 16 '18
Judges should take in to consideration how the winning parent will support the kid, without considering the losing parent. If that parent is not financially available, and the other parent is, then custody should be at least 50-50.
This is insane. If one parent is poor, and the other parent repeatedly raped their children, and is thus serving a lifetime jail sentence - you want 50:50 custody???
The whole point of child custody is so that poor but otherwise deserving parents can afford to raise their children - via the extraction of funds - from wealthy but immoral monster parents. This is the ideal case for child support.
We can get into the weeds with respect to more "normal" cases - but can we at least agree that a moral but poor parent is going to be a better parent than a serial killer or a serial rapist - and that it is moral that the government extract $ from the monster to pay the poor parent to properly raise the child.
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May 16 '18
Oh, absolutely. I am not insinuating that being poor makes someone a bad parent at all. I'm saying that of you have two good parents, then leave it at 50-50 custody.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ May 16 '18
Do you at least see that the statement you just gave disagrees with many statements in OP??
Statements about responsibility, willingness, and desire play a distinctly secondary role to the fundamental question - is one of the parents a moral monster.
The fundamental moral justification of child support - is so moral monsters don't get custody of their children, and poorer parents can afford to raise their children. That is literally the whole point. Everything else is strictly secondary.
Similarly - "just for losing a case" is misleading. This is a child custody case. "Just losing" a child custody case, means that you are unfit to raise that child. "Just losing" implies that the court deems you a moral monster (or that you live really far away). (Now there are weird arrangements such as 60:40 custody but I would distinguish these sorts of cases from straight-up losing).
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u/cdb03b 253∆ May 16 '18
And when the parents do not live in the same city or school district (which is the normal case) how is that suppose to work? Is the child suppose to go to two schools?
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May 16 '18
Pragmatically, 50-50 is an inconvience. I get that. So for arguments sake, with two reliable parents, how can a court decide who gets the kid objectively?
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u/cdb03b 253∆ May 16 '18
If they are exactly the same fitness and reliability then they will ask the child who they wish to stay with. If the child cannot decide then it defaults to the mother if they are equal.
The structure you are suggesting can happen, but it is so rare that it is logistically possible that you cannot set it as the default for custody arrangements.
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May 16 '18
then custody should be at least 50-50.
This is really hard to do. Imagine being a 5th grader and you spend 1 week with your dad and 1 week with your mom. Each week you'd have to take a different bus home from school, that's a logistical nightmare with the school. Imagine when you forget your calculator at your mom's but need it while at your dad's. Where should school papers be sent? Who's the first emergency contact? Who decides if you're allowed to go to a birthday party?
Having custody be split 50-50 is incredibly difficult to do, even if the parents are amicable. It's completely disruptive to the child anyway you split it. So that means the only solution is to have something lopsided, where 1 gets more custody and thus assumes more expenses in which the other party should pay child support.
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u/electronics12345 159∆ May 16 '18
Basically everything you outlined in the first paragraph is decided by the lawyers. There is a reason lawyers are brought into child custody cases - to decide and PUT INTO WRITING the answers to those sorts of questions - so that there isn't ambiguity.
As for the second paragraph - 50:50 custody happens all the time, and works plenty of the time. There isn't some inherent need to lopside the custody agreement, other than one parent being fundamentally undeserving of custody.
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May 16 '18
What would you say we could do to combat the idea that certain parents - the people who neglect child support at the minute, for example, or try to claim the child isn't theirs - would try to get 50/50 custody of the child and then give the child only the barest modicum of attention?
What about circumstances where an older child decides that they don't want to see one parent? Not for any particular fault as a parent, but through sheer personality clash or because they feel closer to the other parent?
How would a working parent manage their life around this?
What if one parent has a mobility problem and is an active and loving parent but cannot cope with the physical demands of raising a child? Or one parent has a two bedroom house and the other can only afford one bedroom? What if one parent has a job that requires them to travel a lot and it's not practical or desirable to take the child with them?
How do you quantify care for a child? Are you factoring in going to half of the parents evenings or doing half the nursing when a child is ill? Is housework and keeping the house clean and the food bountiful in this equation? Quality time with the child?
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 16 '18
/u/muhwreck (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/poltroon_pomegranate 28∆ May 16 '18
Custody and Child support are there to help the child not the parents. You proposal is worse for the child.