Support for New Mexico's Allocation
Laurie Morgan
Ms. Morgan at her web site supportguidelines.com asks this hypothetical of an individual proposing an alternative to the income shares model. Suppose you have a father, mother and child living at the minimum poverty level of approximately $14,000 and they split up. After the breakup, the poverty level for a parent and child is going to be about $12,000. The poverty level for the other parent is going to be about $9,000. After the breakup, the parties will need $21,000 to be at the poverty level, but they only have $14,000. She argues that Income Shares is appropriate because it ensures that there is some modicum of support for the child.
Barbara L. Shapiro
In her excellent book Family Law in New Mexico (out of print? www.abogado.com) (available at libraries and sometimes at Amazon.com as a used book), Ms. Shapiro argues that the drop in the standard of living caused by a broken up household “frightens children the most.” The children may feel they are being punished for the parent’s break up. “The financial shortages affect their belief in their capacity to succeed and their sense of personal power and worth.”
It should be noted that the above sections, Ms. Morgan's and Ms. Shapiro's, have been placed by me as possible reasons for supporting New Mexico's allocation of Child Support. In that sense, they have been taken out of context by me- neither of those authors were explicitly defending the allocation of funds in child support when they were making their points
Practical Issues of Income Shares
One of the problems of Income Shares is that it creates a bonus situation for having the children. If you are the custodial parent, not only do you get to see the children more often, but you also get to make more decisions regarding what is purchased for them. The entire amount that the couple together should be spending on their child is transferred to one home. This is the jackpot.
If Ms. Shapiro is correct about the children needing material items of similar quality products and services as they had in an intact household, they may develop and unnatural liking for the parent that is spending this money on them. The other parent will appear to be uncaring by failing to actually purchase these goods. There can be parents that are pushed into a situation where they do not want to see their children because they cannot meet their demands for material items. The plight of the non-custodial parent who earns less than the custodial parent is even worse. They are contributing to the higher income home, in an effort to ensure that home's welfare is the same as though they were living together. The non-custodial parent may end up with a dramatically less attractive home for the child.
Moreover, there is almost no court supervision as to how the custodial parent spends the child support. Judges will tell you that child support is defined as money given to the custodial parent. They do not have the time or inclination to delve into how child support is being spent. Our State Statutes have no requirement that child support be spent on the child. Unless the child is suffering, the Court will never examine how child support is being used. I hate to sound like FoxNews(tm) , but some people argue that they pay too much in child support to an individual that spends the money on themselves.
Related to this concern is the notion that the Rothbarth calculations are sometimes said to underestimate the true costs of child rearing. This is because parents are thought to be selfish. When money is available, they are going to make sure their luxuries, adult clothing, tobacco and liquor are taken care of. They may also not share all of the items they purchase with their children (Dad's computer). If they do bias their spending in this way, then using these items as an equivalence measure will mean that the income used when the adult expenditures are equal in the comparison homes will underestimate the true cost to have equal welfare in a home with children and a home without children.
If the adults are selfish, what does this say about child support in general. Would you like to do an analysis of a single parent home with a child and one without. Do you wonder what the comparison of expenditures on adult goods might be? I scoured the web for it and could not find anything. One web site I found states that the data is insufficient for this analysis.
Relationship to Child Custody
Child custody battles are contentious enough, adding an unnatural economic bonus to the winning of that fight only makes them more problematic. Moreover, the notion that child support is the same for someone who has their child 34% of the time as someone who never sees their child is ludicrous (Worksheet B, reducing child support comes into play when each of the spouses has the children for at least 35% of the time). Additionally, if the parent that is at 34% has limited funds for supporting their child’s wants and needs, they may have a disadvantage in garnering their child’s love and affection.
Summary
I cannot say that the Rothbarth estimator is completely invalid. I do believe the Income Shares approach is flawed enough that it should be reexamined. If you know of a web site that does a better job of explaining New Mexico's allocation of child support, please let me know. I would also be happy to post a well-reasoned response to my arguments.
- 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