Legislative Background of Child Support
Federal Family Support Act of 1988
The Federal Government’s Family Support Act of 1988 provided that each state was to implement child support guidelines and that they were to be presumptively correct. This presumption means that to have a child support obligation deviate from the guideline amount you needed to have a finding that it would be inappropriate or unjust in the particular case. The Act also mandated that the states review their guidelines every four years and the appropriateness of deviations from the guidelines awarded during that time.
New Mexico's 1994 Executive Commission on Child Support
In 1994 the state legislature Executive Commission created subcommittees to review, among other things, New Mexico’s child support guidelines. The state’s Human Services Department hired Robert G. Williams, Ph.D. to “advise the commission on the economic basis for the Child Support Guidelines, and related child support matters.” 1994 Child Support Guidelines Review Commission Report, at page 3 (hereafter noted as Commission Report). Mr. Williams provided an “exhaustive and comprehensive” report to the commission at an all day session on August 5, 1994. ibid. The Commission was persuaded by Mr. Williams and adopted his “income shares” model, and in particular the “Rothbarth estimator.”
Income Shares
Mr. Williams in his 1994 publication, Child Support Guidelines: The Next Generation” provides that: “The Income Shares model is based on the concept that the child should receive the same proportion of parental income that he or she would have received if the parents lived together. A basic child support obligation is computed based on the combined income of the parents replicating total income in an intact household.”
- Theory Overview
- Theory Page 1 -Legislative Background
- Theory Page 2 -Statute Assumptions, Rothbarth Estimator and Equivalency Measures
- Theory Page 3 -Allocation of child support
- Theory Page 4 -Support for Allocation and Summary