How Illogical Child Support Rules Can Force Kids Into Poverty

While the media focuses on celebrity divorces, such as the recent multimillion-dollar divorce between Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, millions of poor and middle-class families suffer from a dysfunctional family court system. That includes the Missouri daughter who helps pay for her own child support so her mother won’t go to jail again. It includes a 2-year-old girl in Tulsa who was living with her father until the court sent him to jail for child support debt.

In the United States, nearly 24 million children grow up in single-parent families. One in three American kids grows up in a broken family, either without a mother or a father or with divorced parents who share physical custody. The problem is pervasive, especially among low-income families, yet receives little attention from politicians. Although the issues are complicated, a simple mathematical fix to one aspect of the situation would improve children’s lives.

Child support guidelines have serious logical design flaws that sometimes generate child support amounts that paradoxically “starve” rather than “feed” children. They often make it impossible for single parents to properly care for their children, forcing some parents into perpetual debt and incarceration.

We analyzed child support guidelines from 10 randomly selected states. All 10 guidelines have mathematical flaws that can generate absurd child support amounts. Here are five examples. All dollar amounts are annual.

Connecticut: A mother and father with two children have 50/50 equal time, shared parenting, and $30,000 and $42,000 in net income. Based on the state’s guidelines, the father should pay $12,103 in child support. Despite equal time with their children, the mother ends up with $42,103 and the father $29,897. The guidelines reverse the incomes of the two parents, increasing the difference between mom and dad; child support “starves” the children in one home to “feed” them in the other.

Mississippi: An every-other-weekend father has two daughters with two different mothers. The mother of the older daughter has $80,000 in net income, while the father and the other mother make $40,000 each. The higher-earning mother receives $5,600 in child support, while the lower-earning mother only receives $4,816. Child support “starves” the younger daughter to “feed” the older daughter, increasing the already large salary disparity between the two mothers.

Minnesota: A father makes $75,000, and the mother $25,000. Their two children spend 275 overnights with dad (75 percent) and 90 with mom (25 percent). With identical proportions, there might not be much need for child support in either direction, but the lower-income mother pays $4,490 to the father under Minnesota rules. With roughly 16 and 25 percent tax rates, the mother has $16,510 in disposable income, while the father has almost four times as much at $60,740. While the children are well provided when living with dad, they are poor on their days with mom.

Georgia: A never-married father has three children with three different mothers, a surprisingly common situation. The mothers have no other children. All four parents have a gross income of $26,000. All three