No, you get real. Yes, children benefit from their parents lifestyle, but why shouldn't this illegitimate child benefir from it as well. SOrry, i think $3500 for Ted is pocket change and I see no problem with that amount. If mend don't want to be paying that much in child support or any high amount I got news for them, don't share your sperm with someone you don't want to have kids with. Otherwise, get used to shoveling out the dollars. That is how that is solved!
What about the mom? If she didn't want to have a fatherless child, why did she open her legs to Ted? Maybe because she knew she might hit the jackpot and get $42,000 a year tax free out of the deal? Calculating child support on the father's income rather than on the real costs of raising a child is clearly immoral -- all you have to do is look at the results. The woman in this case, every bit as irresponsible as Ted, gets a son plus $42,000 a year tax free. Ted, no more irresponsible than the woman, gets no son out of the deal, is out $42,000 a year, and gets no tax break.
If child support was calculated based on the costs of raising a child rather than on a percentage of the absent parent's income, you can bet your butt that there would be fewer cases like this, and a whole heck of a lot fewer women who would opt to divorce husbands who never cheated on them, never abused them, but who simply became old hat. "I need to find myself ..." is something heard often from such women, and they deserve no sympathy. If that's what they wanted, they should never have married and had kids in the first place.
Under the present system, mothers have ZERO incentive to make a marriage work, and fathers have ZERO options or influence if their wives decide to call it quits. Take the big child support $$$$ away, and the women might have second thoughts.