On Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:27:04 -0800, "Bob W"
wrote:


"Kenneth S." wrote in message
.. .
The November 4 Washington Post contained a story about a proposed
increase in Maryland child support guidelines. The following is an
e-mail that I sent to the reporter who wrote the story.




"There's a great deal of misunderstanding about child support.
Your story was clear and well-written, but in any future stories you
write about child support, I hope you will keep in mind the following
three points:

"(1) Apparently, Maryland officials are talking about "the first
increase in 20 years in recommended child support payments." However,
the fact is that the state's existing CS guidelines (like those of
most states) are tied to the incomes of parents. See
http://www.dhr.state.md.us/csea/help.php. So if parental income
rises, the child support amounts rise with it. If, on top of this,
the numbers in the state guidelines are raised, non-custodial parents
are being told that the state doesn't care about their ability to pay,
which is linked to their income levels.

The CS guidelines are based on social science research detailing the
expenditures for rearing children in intact families. If there are no
reported increases in the costs of rearing children, and I have seen none,
then increases in CS amounts are completely arbitrary without any
justification.

If anything, it would be my guess the current economic conditions are
causing the expenditures on children to decrease, which would then cause the
CS amounts to go down.

The total lack of social science research into the costs of raising children
by single parents is a disgrace. If the researchers were to examine single
parent expenditures on children they would be forced to acknowledge the
contributions made by both parents in their separate households.

I haven't been actively involved in this issue for some years.
However, when I was, the "research" involved in setting state CS
guidelines was utterly phony. So I agree with the point made above.

Some years back, most states relied on the very shaky findings
of Robert G. Williams, of Denver-based Policy Studies, Inc. He
pandered to his audience (state CS bureaucrats who paid him big
consulting fees), and plucked figures out of the air to justify
increases in what fathers had to pay. For all I know, this may still
be going on.

For years, it was never even acknowledged that the costs of
children to noncustodial parents were not taken into account when CS
guidelines were being cooked up. This defect was most conspicuous
when it came to the fixed costs, like the extra housing costs that
fathers had to pay to provide accommodation for their children, even
if the children were with them only every other weekend and for a
period during the summer. I suspect the situation hasn't changed.

It is many years since my younger child reached the age of
majority, and I could at last get my ex-wife off my payroll. However,
the grotesque anti-male discrimination in all aspects of CS still
bothers me.

Then there are the social costs of the present system. No one
even bothers to consider whether, in the wider context, it is wise to
provide mothers with major tax-free incentives to establish fatherless
families by expelling their husbands. Surely we know enough about the
social pathologies associated with fatherless families to stop
subsidizing their creation.