Should Child Support Laws be Amended?
It’s no secret that most people paying child support believe child support laws are unfair. Oddly, many people that receive child support also believe laws need to be changed. In an online discussion about child support, one participant made the following statement:
The problem with most child support discussions is people base their responses on their personal experiences or experiences of their friends and neighbors. Doesn’t mean it right or wrong but what it means when you do that is you’re not objectively looking at the child support system. Look at it like this, most bills and policies get changed or revisited all the time. For example the stand your ground law in Florida that everyone so desperately wants Florida legislators to change or even abolish. Well apply that to child support laws for the entire country. These are laws and policies that were put in place over 60 plus years ago, do you honestly believe in this day and age we should still be following or working off a model of payments for custodial and non custodial parents that was developed 60 plus years ago? Times have changed changed and just as we expect certain gun laws be changed as we feel like it or because it makes national news so should other laws and policies such as child support.
In some cases, I have seen child support payments misused, even by the system itself. How is it that a person can owe a certain amount in child support for back payment and pay that amount, but the excess goes to the court and not the custodial parent? How are some people allowed to view child support payments as their own personal income to pay household bills that they’d have even if they didn’t have a child?
I think it might be time for child support laws to be revisited. What do you think?