January 25th, 2012
Writer Promotes Income Shares System for Child Support
A columnist for the Chicago Tribune penned an interesting article this week that raises important questions about the nature of Illinois child custody laws, which resemble similar divorce regulations in states across the country.
In Illinois, child custody is usually determined by taking a fixed percentage of the income of the parent who doesn’t have physical custody of the children. This percentage is raised by a few points for each child that is involved in the divorce.
Typically, a state court will calculate the necessary amount of money that will go to the custodial parent each year, and this is either garnished from the non-custodial parent’s wages or paid in a less invasive manner.
And, while this system has remained in place for years and resembles child custody norms across the country, it is not without its flaws.
First, it is simply too inflexible for a number of different situations that might occur. For example, if the parent who is paying child support still has custody of the children on some occasions (say, during the weekends), that parent may be paying too much support overall.
If the paying parent is providing food and shelter for his or her children during the weekend, that parent may effectively be paying double for the children’s care.
Unfortunately, current child custody laws do not always allow for such a complex child care arrangement, and seem to be operating under the assumption that child custody is a zero-sum game, in which one parent is solely responsible for raising the children, and the other is solely responsible for providing funds.
In addition to this problem, the editorial board at the Chicago Tribune also observed that the current system fails to adequately address the issue of who pays when the custodial parent earns much more income than the other parent.
Under the current system, non-custodial parents with relatively small incomes may be facing an unfair burden when it comes to child support payments.
Due to these difficulties, legislators in Illinois are proposing that the state follow the lead of 38 other states and dramatically reform its child support laws.
Specifically, legislators have proposed an “income shares” system based on a simple premise: parents will share the financial burden of raising their children in a proportional manner.
So, under this system, a parent that makes more money, even if he or she has physical custody of the children, will have to bear a larger financial burden.
Advocates for this measure argue that the new system will still allow children to have the same quality of life that they did in a two-parent household, but that the system will treat former spouses more equitably and that it will recognize the shifting financial realities of the modern American marriage.
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