Posted on 04/25/2002 4:46:27 AM PDT by RogerFGay
A Georgia court has declared the state’s child support guidelines unconstitutional. The decision bans the use of a presumptively correct formula that produces arbitrarily high awards, a universal practice in the United States since 1990. The consequences of a nationwide ban could extend well beyond allowing courts to set child support awards at reasonable levels.
The judgment states three requirements for constitutionally acceptable child support decisions. Both parents have an equal obligation to support their children in accordance with their relative means to do so; regardless of their gender and custodial status. The amount awarded as “child support” must be limited to address only the need for financial support of dependent children. Child support awards must be rationally related to the relevant facts and circumstances of each case.
Child support law existed in the thirteen colonies and has existed in the states since the beginning of the nation’s history. Not surprisingly, the requirements presented in the Georgia judgment are reminiscent of traditional law that developed through more than two hundred years of case precedent. Federal reforms effectively blocked the application of established legal principles by extending the use of politically controlled formulae, known as child support guidelines, to non-welfare cases. State courts have been required to apply their state’s formula in every child support case and presume that results are correct.
Despite a federal requirement for states to review their guidelines to assure that their use results in a just and appropriate award in every case, no state has ever validated the logic of their guidelines. According to child support collection entrepreneur Robert Williams who is the primary designer of most state guidelines, the objective was to increase the average amount of an award by two and a half times. It is this practice in particular, arbitrarily increasing awards by using a presumptively correct formula that the Georgia court found unconstitutional.
Since the federal reforms took effect, mathematical studies performed by the Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology (PICSLT) have confirmed the necessity of the three principles in defining the logic for properly determining child support awards. The overpayment resulting from the use of guidelines has become known as hidden alimony.
On the other side of the issue is a strange coalition of special interest groups that profit from the current system. These include state enforcement agencies, private collection businesses, and women’s groups that have sought higher financial benefits for divorce. Billions of dollars in federal funding have driven the system, creating a vast network of political friends.
It was the reforms themselves that were largely responsible for bringing the child support collection industry into existence. Private collection agencies, such as the one owned by Robert Williams, keep approximately 15 percent of all the money they collect. The government enforcement system is also rewarded by an increase in federal funding in proportion to the amount collected. During the 1990s, these financial benefits led to a unique form of mutual support and power sharing between government and private agencies under the rubric of privatization.
The coalition exerted enormous influence on government policy and managed a persuasive propaganda campaign against a group they labelled “deadbeat dads.” Promoters projected substantial drops in welfare rolls by “forcing fathers to pay.” Taxpayers were promised significant savings. But the promise was not substantiated by credible feasibility studies and the savings did not materialize. Significant reductions in welfare dependency were only experienced along with a general drop in unemployment.
The reforms drove many fathers into debt and poverty, at times resulting in jail sentences for non-payment. The new system decreased their ability to spend time with their children, increased demands on temporarily unemployed fathers who sought reductions, forced low income fathers to work in the cash economy to survive, and even forced payments from some men who had never met the mother. Billions of dollars have been collected that cannot be dispersed. The Georgia court, rightly so, determined that the child support system subjects parents, especially fathers, to unnecessary government interference.
Certain administrative procedures for setting and enforcing child support awards have also been declared unconstitutional in Michigan and Minnesota. Child support enforcement agencies exercise powers reserved for the judiciary. States have done little to reform their systems and it may take further action to compel states to operate constitutionally.
The fate of the child support system is largely in the hands of attorneys, who need to make greater efforts to exercise the constitutional role of the judicial branch. At least twenty billion dollars has been paid in court costs and attorneys’ fees in the process of arbitrarily increasing award amounts over ten years. That is approximately the total amount of child support legally due each year. Lawyers are now set to experience another windfall if guidelines are determined unconstitutional throughout the country as millions of non-custodial parents return to the courts to have their orders reduced to reasonable levels.
The projected reduction in debt would take much of the wind from the sails of the child support collection industry, possibly eliminating financial influences that have distorted welfare reform efforts for more than two decades. This in turn could significantly reduce federal interest in operating a child support enforcement system that manages non-welfare cases.
If courts are to continue to use child support guidelines, greater emphasis needs to be placed on credible engineering research and development. Designs need to be validated to the extent possible before they are put into use and bad ideas need to be rejected before they harm the public. The application of a presumptively correct formula for determining child support awards is a profound deviation from established constitutional process that demands careful and constant scrutiny.
Roger F. Gay is lead researcher on Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology. He can be reached at picslt@mail.lawguru.com.
Is this the end of using an abstract system (that is unrelated to the real lives of the people concerned) to determine the size of payments?
The current system tells women (and adolescent girls) that all they have to do is get pregnant and have the baby (even if they do it by deceitful means, like telling their sex partner they're on the pill when they're not, or even using the contents of a discarded condom to make themselves pregnant), and the man will be held legally responsible for supporting the baby for the next 18 years. What a crock! It's high time women and the legal system faced the fact that WOMEN have babies; men don't.
Those babies are here because of a sex act between a man and a woman. If a man doesn't want to expose himself to the possibility of supporting a child for the next 18 years, he shouldn't have sex until he's married. I would assume a male has that much self-control.
Now, I completely believe parents have an obligation to support the children they bring into the world, what I do not believe in, as a woman btw, is for only 1 of those parents to have that legal obligation. You tell me, how does is square by the 14th amendment, in fairness at all, or in any other justification you can think of that 1 parent can be placed in jail for not working, while the other is legally allowed not to work?
How is it in the best interest of the child to turn one parent into nothing more then a walking wallet who is rarely even given in standard custody and support arrangements a tax break, even if they are paying 100% of the support for the child. You see, this is the United States of America, this is not supposed to be a country that picks and chooses the amendments it wants to follow. Equal protection applies to both sexes not just one. And as the judge rightly noted, current child support enforcement goes again fathers mostly. Not legal in this country by anyones stretch of the immagination.
I strongly suggest you become educated in the other side of the child support issue, the side that represents 50% of the maker of the children, the fathers before running off at the mouth about a topic you've obviously given little thought too.
Responsible parents ought to provide for their children because it is the right thing to do. Unfortunately both parents often become "children" when dealing with one another and any logic goes out the window. With welfare costs climbing, in 1975 Congress enacted the first child support laws and he has gotten more and more complicated in the intervening years. I don't have the answers.
I was more interested in the decision by the lower court judge. IMHO, his opinion is going to be reversed for any number of reasons, but it does give any number of groups and agencies the ability to file amicus briefs when this case gets to the state Supreme Court--a full employment case for child support, women's groups and men's groups lawyers. The net result of this decision is that Ms. Sweat got her child support reduced, but that's only temporary.
You GUESS it takes two people to make a baby? What? She got herself pregnant without benefit of sperm? When a man and a woman decide to have sex, they had both better be prepared to support a child that may well issue from that act of sex. It's called responsibility.
And educate myself? Oh, silly boy. I worked in this field for a decade. So here's some questions I know you'll be able to answer: how many types of child support guidelines are there and what are there names? How many different child support guideline systems are there in the states and territories? What are the titles of the federal legislation that govern child support? Who regulates and implements child support in the federal government? What's a IV-D agency?
Those are just for starters. This is an open book test so feel free to use google.com.
Wow, what a novel idea!
Child support is one huge area that is out of control and very irrational today. Screw this "potential earning power" crap that they stick on men who are "underemployed". Both parents should only be required by law to provide the BARE MINIMUM of what a child needs. None of this, "He could be earning more money and my baby wants Air Jordan's".
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