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February 8, 2005 |
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Dear Don,
The child support showdown is under way in Massachusetts.
Under federal law, Massachusetts must review and possibly revise its
Child Support Guidelines this year. (As you probably know, the
Guidelines are a formula that is used to compute your child support
order. It is based on the number of children, his income, her income,
and a few other factors.)
In Massachusetts, the responsibility for the Guidelines falls to the
Chief Justice for Administration and Management, Robert A. Mulligan.
Fathers & Families has begun its campaign for child support reform by
writing Chief Justice Mulligan and requesting a meeting.
As some of you remember, Fathers & Families single-handedly won
substantial reductions in the Guidelines in 2002. Whether we are able to
win additional child-friendly changes will depend entirely on YOU: how
many new members you recruit, how energetic you are in supporting this
cause, and your financial support. There are powerful forces that would
like to raise the Guidelines even higher than they have been in the
past. Fathers & Families is the only force standing between them and
success.
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Meanwhile, there are revolutionary changes next door in New Hampshire.
Due in part to the incessant efforts of Representative David Bickford,
the New Hampshire Legislature created a commission to study child
support. It issued its report on December 1, 2004, and it is quite
amazing.
The New Hampshire Commission found "the current New Hampshire Child
Support Guidelines to be unfair and inappropriate in many circumstances
and in dire need of reform and revision."
New Hampshire, like Massachusetts, declares that the objective of its
Guidelines is to maintain the same standard of living in the custodial
parent's household that would have existed had the marriage remained
intact. The Commission took particular aim at this principle. A majority
of the Commission concluded that the objective of child support payments
is to assure that a child's basic needs are met. The Commission quoted a
1986 Minnesota case, Moylan v. Moylan as follows, "The government's
interest in family expenditures on children is limited to ensuring that
the children's basic needs are met. Not extravagances, not luxuries, but
needs. Once that occurs, government intrusion must cease." The report
went on to say that the Commission "agrees 'standard of living' should
not be a concern of government and government should not be collecting
money on behalf of a 'lifestyle' that government has no interest in
measuring or actually enforcing." Along the same lines, the Commission
wrote, "The economic reality of maintaining multiple households may be
inconsistent with maintaining the 'standard of living' of the children
in the initial family."
The Commission also recognized that, "Child support is often in excess
of the cost of raising children, which encourages litigation."
The Commission also recognized that it is not good for children to base
a child support order on the income from overtime work or a second job
(unless necessary to meet the child's basic needs), because the order
will then be so high that the non-custodial parent will be forced to
work endless hours, and will thus be unable to be a parent to his child.
The Commission also recognized that, like Massachusetts, the New
Hampshire Guidelines almost guarantee that the second family of a
non-custodial parent will be worse off than his first family.
The Commission also recognized that in New Hampshire, like
Massachusetts, an increase in earnings by the recipient of child support
has almost no effect on the child support award. They stated, "This
result is contrary to professional studies on child costs. . ."
The New Hampshire Commission's central recommendation is quite
revolutionary. It calls on the state to scrap efforts to base child
support awards on something as elusive as the "standard of living" and
instead to provide "basic costs" of raising a child. After reviewing
four sources of data on the actual costs of raising a child, the
Commission concluded that the basic cost in New Hampshire is somewhere
on the order of $400 to $600 a month, probably excluding healthcare
costs.
The New Hampshire Commission report is one of the first to take a cold
hard look at the realities of child support. It discards the pieties,
platitudes and slogans that form the basis of Child Support Guidelines
in most states and substitutes critical analysis. It remains to be seen
whether New Hampshire will implement the recommendations of its
Commission. But whether it does or not, the report is a big step in the
direction of clear thinking.
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BTW, one of the most important things that you can do as a member of
this e-list is get other people to join. If you think of anyone who
would enjoy or benefit from receiving our e-mails, please click on the
link below that says "forward email."
Best Regards,
Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Fathers & Families
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