Canadian Statistics say...

These statistics show that a voluntary agreement (private agreement) is more
effective than a court-ordered agreement. This is no big surprise as people
are more resistant about being told what to do. This report doesn't seem to
lead to any solutions that would coerce people into coming to a "private
agreement" rather than using the court-ordered approach.

http://canada.justice.gc.ca/en/ps/sup/pub/anlsc.pdf

"...in general, more children who are covered by what their parents describe
as
a private agreement receive regular support payments than children whose
parents say they have
a court-ordered agreement. Two thirds of children under private agreements
benefited from
regular support payments, compared to 43 percent of children whose parents
stated they had a
court-ordered agreement. Moreover, cases where there have been no payments
in the last six
months are much more common where the parents said there was a court order
than where
support payments are dealt with through a private agreement (30 percent vs.
14 percent)."

"...the frequency of contact with the non-custodial parent is
associated with the type of child support agreement that was reached.
Private child support
agreements were associated with more frequent contacts between children and
their noncustodial
parent than all other types of arrangements (including no agreement). They
were
associated with higher proportions of children living with their fathers
either full time or part
time (18 percent) or visiting their fathers on a weekly basis (44 percent),
and with a much
smaller number of cases (4 percent) where there was no contact with the
non-custodial parent."

"Other things being equal, children whose parents said they had a custody
court order appeared
less likely to visit their father on a regular or irregular basis than those
who were not covered by
a court order. The degree of tension between the parents surrounding access
and visitation was
also found to significantly influence the propensity of fathers to maintain
contact with their
children. At first, it is surprising to find that fathers appeared more
likely to keep contact with
their children when some tension existed between the parents. But this might
be due to the fact
that in situations where children have completely lost contact with their
father, obviously no
tension is reported about living arrangements or visitation. The probability
that a father would
maintain contact tended to decrease as the time since separation increased,
while children born to
common-law couples had a much lower likelihood of visiting their father on a
regular or
irregular basis than those born to married parents."

-- This is no big surprise either.

Papa
--
---------------------------
http://forfairchildsupport.netfirms.com