RUNNING HEADER: SOCIAL HISTORY OF CHILD SUPPORT

Abstract
A key component of welfare reform involves changes in the assumptions about human behavior which are embedded in social policies. Policy assumptions have been transformed from forcing a belief that social service providers act as guardians, to a stance in which all participants are regarded as self-seeking cons. These ideas are particularly pertinent to policy developments concerning financial obligations for children, and this paper examines these issues in relation to child support policy in the US. It highlights the evident and inevitable failure of this policy to meet its primary stated aim of revenue generation. In the US this failure is compounded by the creation of parallel systems for dealing with children and families, one for financial obligations and the other for care and development, which are founded on downward opposed assumptions about human behavior and capabilities.

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………...4
Social Policy History……………………………………………………….4-6
Research History…………………………………………………………...7-9
Child Support Becomes the Law…………………………………………..10
Child Support Law & It’s Effects…………………………………………11-13
Social Effects: Parents, Children & Child Support………………………..14-15
Child Support System Changes….…………………………………………15-16
Child Support System Remedies….………………………………………..17
Child Supports Outcome on Communities/Government/Family……………17-18
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...18-19
References…………………………………………………………………...19-21

Over the past 25 years, the number of single parent households, as well as the amount of children living in a home with one parent has increased to unforgiving numbers. Most of the children involved come from a divorce situation or blended family. The dramatic change within this minority is important in today’s society because most of the children in these situations have another parent that is absent and able to provide support to them, but the system is used and abused. This paper will explain why this study is significant by providing astounding details about how this system is used and abused. This paper also provides insight into solutions to fixing the issues which highlights the benefit of this research and the reason why this topic is so important.
The main players are the parents who are divorced and no longer living together, and the children.(The children also have a stake in whether child support is paid, but we have omitted their interests in this process since they typically do not have explicit legal rights.). Parents are then broken down into custodial and non-custodial. The mother, usually the custodial parent because the children live with her, receives the support, while that father, usually the non-custodial parent, pays the support. So both the mom and dad have a part in the payment of support. Next is the federal government. During the past two decades the court system has been the liaison as it relates to support, leaving room for more active participation from state and local governments.
During the past 20 years, child support reform has dramatically altered the way in which enforcement of child support and the initiation of an order are created. Prior to 1975, child support policy was dictated largely by family law in each state and enforced by the court system. As such, the child support enforcement process was “complaint driven.” In other words, in order to establish legal paternity, to obtain a child support order, or to collect upon an existing order that was not being paid, a custodial parent had to hire an attorney, file a complaint, and go to court.
During the early part of the nineteenth century, the American court system have an influx of cases that dealt primarily with marital breakdowns and divorce, and from these cases it was evident that the laws at that time had no plan for support actions as it related to the welfare and care of the children involved. Many of the American laws were inherited from English laws that were made in the early nineteenth century; with most of the laws stating that non-enforceable duty was the only responsibility that the father would be held accountable for as it related to the care of the children. As a matter of fact during that time allowing a third party to recover funds and support was forbidden, and could only be allowed if a pre-authorized contract had been put in place with the father. On the contrary in certain cases, on a case by case basis the recovery of support was approved, but not likely. The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 authorized the local parishes to recover some of the funds that were spent in caring for a single mother and her children who were not provided for by the children’s father (Chambers, 1989).
However, this law would only be used if the children and mother were completely impoverished. In addition, the Elizabethan Poor Law allowed the town to recoup their relief costs. Mothers and third parties were not allowed to ask for assistance with support expenses. Even with the misplacement of child provision within the law, realizing that the father had a legal obligation to provide, assist, and care for his children was a slow process for American law.
One of the earliest American support cases was Stanton vs. Willson. The Supreme Court of Connecticut decided this case in 1808 (Chambers, 1989). In this case, the Supreme Court of Connecticut allowed Eunice Stanton to recover support from her first husband on behalf of her deceased second husband, Joshua. It is interesting to note in this case that two of Eunice's children had been awarded to her by a custody decree, and the third had fled from her ex-husband because of fears of abuse (Chambers, 1989). The court clearly stated in this case that the children’s father was legally bound “to protect, educate, and maintain their legitimate children” (Chambers, 1989). Once this case took place other cases began to surface in New Jersey and New York, referencing specifically to making the father financially obligated to his children. In the nineteenth century divorced and separated mothers were almost guaranteed to fall into poverty so almost every case during this time was in need of child support as a means of financial dependency. This statute however wasn’t just used by the poverty stricken however. Families that were financially stable during this time period were faced with the reality that the man was ten times more likely to profit after divorces and that the once well-off women would fall into poverty. Women during this time period earned way less than that of a man, so even if mothers found jobs for themselves it would be hard to make it beneficial.
Once the obligation to financially provide for children was legally established, the outpouring from third parties and vendors claiming to have supported all the mothers and families trying to recoup these funds from the fathers that were now obligated was tremendous. As the support doctrine continued to develop after the 1850s, the courts began to use a two part “test” to determine the basis for reimbursement (Garfinkel, 2000). The first step was determining if items purchased and provided were necessary, meaning food, shelter and clothing. Next was to determine if negligence had been performed by the father or in other words seeing if the father had not provided the necessities for the children on purpose. Before long, the courts in America utilized this child support doctrine to allow newly divorced women to recover directly from their spouse for money they spent in supporting their offspring (Garfinkel, 2000). Just as the courts were trying to do so, the mothers also had to furnish any proof they had to show that the fathers and ex-husbands were failing to provide support to the children, and that the fault of the divorce was on the hands of the father. By the late nineteenth century, most states had adopted some kind of law and doctrine that forced the duty of fathers supporting their children. However, this was not a privilege that could be exercised by blacks as was meant only for Caucasian cases. During these times it was illegal for blacks to marry and slavery was still very relevant in the Southern and some northern states. The law also stated that only white men could be the heads of their households and not black men. Therefore child support was not relevant to black men. During the times of slavery having a legal father was not an option for black children, therefore making it impossible for any black mother to seek support or any assistance from her children’s father. It was not until after the Civil War that black couples were legally allowed to marry, and in many instances, black couples dismissed the formal institute of marriage and instead chose to maintain informal and unofficial marriages (Garfinkel, 2000). In the twentieth century laws continued to grow and changed. The first federal child support enforcement legislation was passed in 1950, making welfare agencies on the state levels contact the law when children had been deserted or abandoned by a parent. Amendments to the Social Security Act in 1965 allowed local and state welfare agencies to obtain information from the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare regarding the address and place of employment of a non-custodial parent who owed support under a court order for support (Henry, 1989). It wasn’t until 1975 that the biggest changes would come about. The collection of child support and enforcement were taking a turn. Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, was signed into law on January 4, 1975. This law allowed the Secretary of Health and Human Services (previously the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare,) to establish a separate division, which would be mandated to oversee the operation of an Enforcement program. This program would establish a parent locator service; state operational guidelines, and a plan for periodic review of cases (Henry, 1989). The primary responsibility for operating the Enforcement program was placed on each state. These provisions were to come into effect by July 1, 1975.The establishment of child support agencies was assisted by the legislation of 1975 that allowed for financing of these agencies to come from the government. It would be within these agencies that child support orders, paternity, and collections of child support would have a foundational start. Cooperating with the agencies to secure child support was required for those mothers who were receiving AFDC, as well as turning over the rights to any uncollected support. At this time if there were parents that were on welfare with a child support order, the agency was then responsible for the collection of the child support that was ordered. Welfare benefits and child support payments were now very important issues and each person played a critical part in this process.
The next big year for child support laws was 1984, when the Child Support Enforcement Amendments were established requiring major improvements in both state and local Enforcement programs (Henry, 2000). Mandatory Income withholding would now be required for all states, with the enforcing and establishment of support orders being expedited in ways as intercepting tax refunds and liens on properties. Consumer credit agencies were now able to receive reports on parents that were delinquent from various states. In 1988, The Family Support Act of 1988 was enacted and this act made several important changes to the child support programs. Most significantly, the act required the courts to use State guidelines when establishing support amounts and states were then required to review their guidelines every four years. Another important provision established with the Child Support Recovery Act of 1992, made it a Federal crime to willfully fail to pay past-due child support payments, with respect to a child who resides in another State (Henry, 2000).
With respect to the laws that have been put in place, there has been continuous and lengthy research that has attempted to estimate the effects of variation in the level of the child support disregard and pass-through. There has also been much research into the unfair advantages and injustices within the child support system for the paying parent. Many states’ full pass-through/disregard policy was subject to an experimental evaluation, the Child Support Demonstration Evaluation (CSDE). Mothers were randomly assigned to either the full pass-through/disregard group (the experimental group) or to receive the first $50/month or 41 percent of what was paid, whichever amount was greater (the control group). The evaluation of this policy (Meyer and Cancian, 2001) demonstrated that the full pass-through and disregard were associated with increased paternity establishment, increased child support collections, and little additional governmental cost.
Under the 1984 Amendments, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was responsible for providing "technical assistance" to states for development of child support guidelines. Direct responsibility was passed to OCSE, and on to Robert G. Williams of Policy Studies, Inc. in Denver, Colorado (Williams, 1987). The OCSE also reviews and approves state plans and evaluates state programs to ensure that they conform to federal requirements and conducts audits to verify that states are in compliance with federal standards (Williams, 1987). From this research, it was beginning to surface that the non-custodial/paying parent was being treated unfairly, and was merely being used as a funding mainstream and not a supporting factor. Upper and middle class income custodial mothers were receiving support awards that were higher than what was needed for the support of the children and higher limits were set as a minimum for support. The courts were also making it appear that in order for the non-custodial parent to have time with the children that the limits for support would be raised basically stating that the father would actually have to pay to see his children. Typically applied to joint or shared custody arrangements, the local government offers the curious explanation that payment to an ex-spouse should be increased to account for the payee's direct expenses for maintaining the "second" household (Henry, 2000).
Single parents spend less on children than would be spent by an intact family because the single parent household typically has less income than the intact family (Lino, 1991). Even if we assumed that one of the comparative standard of living estimates gave an accurate estimate of spending on children, awards based on information about spending in the intact household provide an automatic complementary benefit to the spouse. This practice has long since been established as illegal; because spousal maintenance can be awarded separately when appropriate (e.g. Hering, 1987). With respect to the child support system, there are many strengths and weaknesses involved. If there are policies for child support in place that are strong and for the best then positions for both parents, health of parents, and total income for both parties should improve from this system. In contrast, child support enforcements effects on both custodial and non-custodial parents can take its toll when the system is not used appropriately. A strong child support enforcement system would reduce the amount of parents on welfare and government assisted programs. It is often found that when mothers are on welfare formal child support payments often substitute for informal payments and typically go to the state rather than to the mother (Nepomnyaschy and Garfinkel 2006). Having a strong and positive child support system that supports both parents would definitely decrease any conflict between mothers and non-resident fathers, which in turn would decrease negative effects on maternal health and health behavior.
As with any other domestic issue the Child Support System has many faults. It is very obvious that the child support system in America is a lucrative business and a good source of income for attorneys, untruthful parents and the court systems. Parents are forced into a back and forth war costing the parents, children, and taxpayers valuable time, plenty of money from court costs, legal fees, and time off work. Even worse someone in the case is almost guaranteed to lose (more often the father) and he ends up worse off than he began now with unnecessary debt and time lost. The whole point of the child support system is to ensure that children receive their obligations from both parents, and more often than less the entire case is built around the parents’ personal vendettas and not the best interest of the children. In most cases it is argued that the children often suffer the most during child support battles because it singles out one parent forcing the children to unintentionally choose between one parent and the other. Non-custodial parents (typically the fathers) often are meant to feel as if they are nothing more than a dollar sign or a large bank account to the children’s mother. They often get put to the side due to having to work to pay the high child support payments, which leaves none to little time to actually spend time with the children.
Attorneys and judges may not want to forfeit the revenues from such a lucrative "business" and there is a pejorative label given to non-custodial parents who resist the child support. They're labeled as "dead beat dads". Trends from within the United States today are pushing for an adjusted system and many groups are demanding a more hands-off approach where government does not try to micromanage family. These trends may encourage change in local and Federal laws (Lino, 2007). The question of how effective is the child support system in helping to relieve its families from poverty is one that may never receive an accurate answer. There may be one family out of twenty that may be relinquished of this dreadful existence. Between 1976 and 1997, the proportion of never-married mothers who received child support increased fourfold (Lino, 2007). Research shows that never-married mothers have much lower rates of receiving child support receipt than mothers that are separated or divorced, and because of this trend the larger scale and picture shows that the probably of this rate changing is slim to none. Even though child support reforms and a strengthened child support enforcement program have led to significantly higher rates of child support receipt for single mothers once shifts in their marital status composition are taken into account. Specific child support enforcement tools have been more beneficial to certain subgroups of mothers than others. Even with perfect enforcement, child support on its own will never be enough to lift many single-mother families out of poverty (Lazear, 2003). This raises another important policy question. How much child support can nonresident parents, usually fathers, afford to pay? Nonresident fathers are not all alike. For example, 15–25% of the nonresident parents have annual incomes below $5,000, but 40–50% has incomes above $20,000 and 10–15% has incomes above $40,000 (Lazear, 2003). For Americans, the average annual salary of a father who is not married is half of what divorced fathers earn, however fathers who are not married show a greater chance of increased income over time (Lazear, 2003). Most research shows that fathers absent from the home could stand to pay more in support and that only a small portion of fathers collapse into poverty due to child support payments or any other payments that they are required to make. There is a large portion of teen mothers that are on but even with the mothers income and AFDC the average annual salary or earnings for mothers who remarry is nearly $36,000 and about $13,000 for mothers who remain single (Lazear, 2003). How successful are fathers in meeting their children’s emotional needs? About 40% of nonresident fathers either did not see their child or saw the child only once in the past year (Lazear, 2003). Whether contact with the nonresident parent benefits a child depends on what happens during the contact, specifically, how much conflict occurs between parents.
The reliance on child support and government assistance in every state continues to grow across the country. Singles mothers rely heavily on other sources of income beyond their pay check. Contributing to this trend is the child support enforcement program, with its expanded enforcement tools, and the only way to fix this is by improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the child support enforcement program. This should result in larger numbers of single-mother families being able to move more towards self-sufficiency and having a system where families can count on receiving payments. The continuation of constant improvement is a must in order for poverty stricken children to receive the support that they deserve.
In order for the child support system to be used properly and to stop the abuse of needy mothers, the system is in need of a change. A changed system will leave fathers in a better position to do what is required of them, and then the focus will only be on those fathers who are truly leaving their families without the support they need, and in some cases the mothers who are paying support. One of the biggest steps in alleviating a big and unfair problem is to eliminate the penalties on supportive parents contained in the tax code. Child support is not a deductible expense like alimony is states the law. This is either backwards, or at least very unfair because child support is paid by non-custodial parents, who have had their rights to exemptions for their children and the child tax credit involuntarily taken away, and thus are suffering a double whammy when they now have the added cost of paying nondeductible child support.
Meanwhile the custodial parent is not given the extra source of support income, but gets to take the tax exemption and child credit for having the children living in her home. Alimony is normally paid only by higher income taxpayers, so giving them a deduction while withholding from lower income people paying child support, also serves as a form of regressive tax – redistributing income from lower income taxpayers to the affluent. If these two changes were made at the national level, parents who are forced to pay support would have an incentive to do what the law is requiring of them – and in many cases, it would make it affordable and attractive to meet their obligation, instead of being so punitive. The next step is to stop rewarding mothers who use the law to separate fathers from their children and gain higher child support awards when they do. With the tools of the Violence Against Women Act at their disposable, in most cases, women merely need to raise allegations – no matter how untrue – that their husbands or children’s fathers have done something that might be considered domestic violence, in order to obtain primary or sole custody of their children, and thereby gain the privilege of monthly support until their youngest child reaches 18 or finishes high school. This is terribly unjust and happens more often than one could imagine. While the law is right to protect women who are truly abused by their mates however, making false allegations of domestic violence should carry with it the risk of losing any claim for child support at any time after the allegations are proven to be false. If a woman uses a claim of abuse to gain an advantage in a custody battle, she should not be rewarded with a financial bonus for creating a rift in the relationship between her children and their father. If the Child Support System would put incentives in the calculation of child support for parents to work together things would turn out better for all parties, especially the children. If parents have equal rights – as our Constitution provides – the starting point for calculating child support should be the presumption that both parents will share equally in the time and care of the children. Recognizing that this will not always be the case, and may not even be the norm, fathers who are willing and want to fully participate in their children’s lives and activities should not be deprived from doing so as is so often seen within the child support system. If the mother, a case worker, custody evaluator or court determines that she should have more time with the children than the father, he should not be penalized for making the effort to be the full father he is trying to be. On the other hand, if he is given the opportunity to be that fully engaged parent and fails to live up to his time commitments, he should not be rewarded for giving up his time with his children, he should be paying support to the mother while leaving them in her care. Lastly, draconian enforcement mechanisms need to be reformed. Imprisonment, loss of professional licenses, passports and drivers’ licenses are some of the tools of threat and torture at a tribunal’s disposal for the nonpayment of state sanctioned support. These punishments rarely help the problem, they usually only make it worse. Instead, the states should: Find incentives for timely or even early payment of support and make the amounts it is requiring to be paid more reasonable – most Dads will pay quite willingly if the payment amount is within the realm of a reasonable expense. Jails have become overcrowded with inmates who have done nothing more than losing a job and becoming unable to pay the amount of support that was imposed. Good credit, new job prospects, etc. all become out of reach once support arrearages are made public. Men who once were the capable providers of their families are left in positions where they are completely unable to provide support at anything close to the level they were in the past. If these changes are made, collections will increase, arrearages will decrease, fathers will have better opportunities for work and time with their children, mothers will feel more secure, and the burden the bureaucracy still costs taxpayers will ease dramatically. We cannot act on these measures soon enough. Fathers who see their children are more likely to pay support, and these fathers pay more support than do those who have no contact with their children (Furstenberg et al., 1983; Seltzer, 1991b; Seltzer, Schaeffer, & Charng, 1989; but see Veum, 1993). It is difficult to determine whether fathers who have more contact with their children pay more support as a result of spending more time with the children or alternatively, whether paying more support increases contact with children. Yet another possibility is that a third characteristic of families, such as fathers’ commitment to children or how well the separated parents get along together, explains both higher child support payments and more frequent visits with children. Despite researchers’ inability thus far to disentangle the association between spending time with children and paying child support, evidence suggests a reasonably consistent pattern in which visiting and paying support go together. This pattern is also evident among families who report problems in their post separation arrangements. Those who report difficulties about visitation and access also often report problems about child support, and vice versa (Pearson & Anhalt, 1994). Thus, even though child support and access or custody matters are usually handled separately in family law, in practice, they are intertwined. Biological fathers’ ties to their children depend greatly on the men’s relationship with the children’s mother. When parents are married or living together, biological fathers devote their time and financial resources to the children; when parents divorce or a non-marital relationship breaks up, fathers disengage from both the mother and their children. Fathers may acquire other children through remarriage or cohabitation, but here again; their ties to the children are through the men’s attachment to the children’s mothers. While a man’s relationship with the children’s mother continues, he helps to provide for the children’s needs. However, when the relationship dissolves, men move on from these children as well. In contrast, women’s ties to children persist whether or not they are involved with the child’s father.

Even when separated children live with their fathers or spend time in both parents’ households, mothers spend more time with their children, organize more child-rearing activities than do nonresident fathers, and, by some reports, supervise children more effectively than do fathers (Furstenberg & Nord, 1985; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Seltzer & Bianchi, 1988). The solution to fixing this broken system will have positive benefits and impacts on the communities, practitioners, and organizations throughout the US.
Fixing the child support system would also alleviate issues on a much smaller scale. For instance, child care access and the abuse of the community on child daycare. Far too much out-of-home child care is being provided by poorly qualified persons for whom it is just another minimum wage job. At the same time, excessive reliance on the state and on licensing system that impeded small, informal neighborhood and community child-care arrangements would only exacerbate the problem as well. If the child support system was arranged according to the above solution, parents would be able to work together to find quality childcare as well as have the funds available to pay for good quality care for their children.
The American child support system has many goals and aspirations for its people. Ordering child support, establishing paternity, and enforcing and helping to maintain regular payments is its number one goal is assuring families that a source of income and stability will be there. The income that is received from parents as child support has the ability to potentially decrease deprivation and take the load off of unnecessary public and government assistance. Helping parents to become self-sufficient is another goal of the child support system and if the system could improve to gain the trust of the parents then it could prove that child support could merely be the means to supplement the parent’s income instead of becoming a complete reliance. On the other hand, child support paid on behalf of families receiving public assistance can directly reduce the immediate costs of public assistance if it is retained by the government rather than passed through to the family and disregarded in the calculation of benefits for families (Kelly, 1994; Pearson, 1993). Federal and state reforms are trying to strengthen men’s ties to their children—both their legal and social rights to children through access and custody, and their financial ties to children through child support orders and better enforcement of those orders. The preliminary evidence suggests that these reforms will help children’s economic welfare. The reforms may also improve children’s social and emotional well-being as long as the changes do not increase children’s contact with highly conflicted parents or as long as these parents manage their conflict in a way that protects their children. Parent education and mediation offer the potential to help parents. Parents who no longer get along as spouses or lovers may be able to learn to get along as parents (Kelly, 1994; Pearson, 1993). Parents cannot have a clean break when their relationship sours because they still share a common resource, their children. In many instances, however, parents can work together cooperatively to manage their hostility and to meet the children’s needs. When parents maintain a high level of conflict and are unable to work together, children suffer (e.g., Johnston, 1994).

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