How Illogical Child Support Rules Can Force Kids Into Poverty
While the media focuses on celebrity divorces, such as the recent multimillion-dollar divorce between Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, millions of poor and middle-class families suffer from a dysfunctional family court system. That includes the Missouri daughter who helps pay for her own child support so her mother won’t go to jail again. It includes a 2-year-old girl in Tulsa who was living with her father until the court sent him to jail for child support debt.
In the United States, nearly 24 million children grow up in single-parent families. One in three American kids grows up in a broken family, either without a mother or a father or with divorced parents who share physical custody. The problem is pervasive, especially among low-income families, yet receives little attention from politicians. Although the issues are complicated, a simple mathematical fix to one aspect of the situation would improve children’s lives.
Child support guidelines have serious logical design flaws that sometimes generate child support amounts that paradoxically “starve” rather than “feed” children. They often make it impossible for single parents to properly care for their children, forcing some parents into perpetual debt and incarceration.