OCR Text |
Show Legal Lines Child support guidelines may O create problems By TAMARA J. HAUGe" Editor's Note: Legal Lines author Tamara J. Hauge Is a practicing attorney with the legal firm Dan Adamson and Associates. She specializes in domestic law, as well as general practice. Tamara is featured regularly on the KALL radio program "Legal Eagles," and is counsel for several parental right groups in the Salt Lake Valley. She can be reached at her firm, 5250 S. 300 W., Suite 255, Salt Lake City, Utah 84107, or by telephoning 262-5885. Her column is a regular feature of the Davis County Clipper. If the new Proposed Child Support Guidelines are implemented, im-plemented, there will be many children who will have less money available to them than is available at the present time. How can this be? It's simple. A high percentage of non-custodial parents (usually fathers, but occasionally mothers) remarry and either live with stepchildren stepchil-dren or have more biological children. If the new guidelines take a bigger chunk out of the noncustodial parent's income, then there is less money available to the second family. This is one of the most serious problems with the proposed child support guidelines . The guidelines specifically provide that a child support sup-port obligation should not be affected by subsequent children. This result, that subsequent children are personas non gratis, is somewhat inconsistent with the basic philosophy behind the new guidelines, which are based upon the "income shares model" mod-el" of child support. The income shares model theorizes that children should have as much income available to them as they would have had if the marriage had continued. Sounds reasonable, reason-able, unless you consider the fact that maybe the married couple would have had additional children during the marriage. Utah families are not famous for being. . . well. . . small. According to T.J. Eppenshade's studies (Eppenshade's study . contains the data upon which the new guidelines were -based), additional children mean less money spent per child in the household. Who really knows how much money two children would have received from a family if the family had remained intact? Theories aside, it seems just plain cruel to take money away from subsequent children simply because they are "subsequent." "sub-sequent." What is really going on here is that the government is assigning assign-ing certain children preferential treatment. Children who were sired by fathers with hefty incomes are assured a hefty income for life. Children born to hefty-income fathers in a subsequent marriage have no such guarantees. This is the new lower class, somewhat like the children of concubines in the age of polygamy. poly-gamy. In fact, new guidelines, if implemented, will place many "subsequent children" in a position of being at or near the governmentally established poverty line. For instance, consider this real life example: Bob, the custodial parent (honest, I'm not making this up) makes $1900 gross per month, while Cindy, the non-custodial parent, makes $1400 gross per month; there are three children born in the marriage with day care expenses of $350 per month. The new guidelines propose that Cindy pay $487 per month in child support. On a gross income of $1400, this will put her take home at $600 or $700, depending on her deductions. If Cindy has anv subsequent children they will be living at or near the poverty level, which is $487 for the first member of the household and $ 1 85 for each subsequent member. Cindy may be in a better situation if her new husband makes a substantial salary. On the other hand, due to the new guidelines, he may be living at the poverty level himself. The argument is always made that Cindy should not have any more children if she cannot be responsible for her first three children. Let's examine this argument. Cindy's children are living with someone who grosses $1900 a month. While this is not a luxury income, it is not a poverty income either. It's not as if Cindy's three children don't have adequate food and clothing. And since when do we give the government power to step in and suggest whether a woman can have subsequent children or not? Since when does the government mandate that any subsequent children will be locked at a poverty level income forever? If you have an opinion about the proposed child support guidelines you should contact your legislators and encourage them to review the proposed guidelines. Otherwise, a new generation of children will be the guinea pigs of the Judicial counsel's coun-sel's experimentation. |