A Further Look at Child Support Guidelines

Roger F. Gay
Project for the Improvement of
Child Support Litigation Technology
Copyright © 2004 Roger F. Gay

Comment: Forum Section
PS: Political Science and Politics
October 2004, pp. 729-30

American Political Science Association
PSOnline www.apsanet.org
Article Submitted for Availability in JSTOR
Article available from Cambridge Journals


Jo Michelle Beld’s article on child support guidelines defends the efforts of the Minnesota Child Support Enforcement Division to maintain the state’s formula for determining child support award amounts (2003). She responds to long-standing criticism, in this instance conveyed by Stephen Baskerville, that the child support enforcement community, which has a financial interest in child support amounts, exercises unchecked authority through the forced use of guidelines, and that as a result, child support awards are arbitrarily high (2002,2003).

The evidence in support of the criticism is actually much more concrete than presented by Baskerville. That the enforcement system’s guidelines were designed to increase child support award amounts is documented in their own work. Legal precedent on the use of their guidelines has established that support amounts are now arbitrarily manipulated by the states. I also believe that the political effect of child support reform has been more alarming than what he reports.

Beld admits that child support collection entrepreneur Robert Williams has had a significant influence on the development of guidelines (715–716). His original 1987 study explicitly states that his recommendations were intended to increase the average child support order by 250%. (Williams, 1987) His justification for the increase was an alleged “adequacy gap” in the amounts that had been awarded under traditional law. But the argument is circular. Study of the original source of the claim (Haskins et al. 1985) reveals that the so-called adequacy gap is just the estimated difference between what had been awarded under traditional law and what would be ordered if child support awards were strictly determined by formulae of the type Robert Williams was suggesting. Far from proving that child support awards were less than they should have been, the source study made the radical political suggestion to raise award levels to improve the standard of living of single mothers; an idea that had always been considered illegal because spousal support and alimony can be awarded separately when appropriate and should never be awarded covertly.

Beld admits a fundamental problem in estimating the cost of raising children. About 90% of household expenditure is “expended on behalf of the whole family, rather than on behalf of individual family members” (716). This creates a wide range of choice in allocating family expenditure to children. Analysts can as easily manufacture a child cost estimate at 10% of custodial parent spending as 30% of the combined income of both parents. What is not mentioned in Beld’s defense is that Robert Williams chose to use intact family spending estimates, which is itself a radical departure from the established child support law that relied on the actual economic circumstances of each family in post-divorce separated households. I also disagree with Beld’s conclusion that the estimating method chosen, even in the context of intact families, did not “yield high estimates of parental spending on children” (716).

What must be classed as error rather than a difference of opinion is that the enforcement system’s choices did not conform to established child support decision theory. Beld explains: “The empirical question at the heart of state child support guidelines is, ‘What do parents spend on their children?’” (716). But their technical approach lacks a theoretical foundation that would put the empirical question in context. The choice of focus on indeterminate child cost calculations to the exclusion of sound theoretical development is itself strong evidence of a will to maintain arbitrary control. The new child support laws present a circular dilemma and a fait accompli for those who wish to present a logical challenge to presumed award levels. What is legally regarded as child support, the specific obligation of the paying parent, and the factors used to determine amounts are whatever the guidelines say. Parents are at the mercy of arbitrary economic choices made by bureaucrats and collection entrepreneurs who have a direct personal financial interest in generating higher levels of debt.

The effect of judicial acceptance of the enforcement system’s choices has been dramatic. P.O.P.S. v Gardner (1993) was a federal class action suit against the State of Washington alleging that the arbitrary nature of their guidelines, which are also based on Robert Williams’ recommendations, violate the Constitution. The group bringing the suit was composed of noncustodial parents whose families had never received public assistance and were unlikely to in the future. In support of the State, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the classification of child support decisions as “social policy.” This classification invites political control that is unconstitutional when applied to private issues. Had it not been for this transition, the application of constitutional principles would have forced correction of the guidelines (Georgia DHR v. Sweat 2002).

The legal reclassification of a private family issue sets a dangerous precedent that opens the door to further government tactics to manipulate families. In regard to child support decisions, the system of checks and balances, the constitutional protections against arbitrary government intrusion, have been destroyed. Baskerville has suggested that political scientists should focus attention on “the large governmental machinery that has arisen . . . to address family issues” (2002, 695). I certainly agree, and would put special emphasis on the dramatic shift in power between branches of government along with the need to restore basic family and other individual rights. Child support reform has led to a fundamental shift in the relationship between government and the primary social unit.


References

Baskerville, Stephen. 2002. “The Politics of Fatherhood” PS: Political Science and Politics 35 (December): 695–99.

–. 2003. “The Politics of Child Support” PS: Political Science and Politics 36 (October): 719–20.

Beld, Jo Michelle. 2003. “Revisiting “The Politics of Fatherhood': Administrative Agencies, Family Life, and Public Policy.” PS: Political Science and Politics 36 (October): 713–18.

Grall, Timothy S. 2003. “Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2001.” Current Population Reports, U.S. Census Bureau, P60-225.

Georgia DHR v. Sweat. 2002. Georgia Georgia Department of Human Resources o/b/o Sweat v. Sweat, Superior Court of Atkinson County, State of Georgia, civil action file number 2000 C 127, February 25, 2002, Hon. C. Dane Perkins, Order Declaring Georgia's Child Support Guidelines Unconstitutional.

Haskins, Ronald, Andrew W. Dobelstein, John S. Akin, and J. Brad Schwartz. 1985. Estimates of National Child Support Collections Potential and the Income Security of Female-Headed Families, Office of Child Support Enforcement, United States Department of Health and Human Services.

P.O.P.S. v. GARDNER, 998 F.2d 764 (9th Cir. 1993), (Parents Opposed to Punitive Support)

Sonenstein, F. L., and C. A. Calhoun. 1990. “Determinants of Child Support: A Pilot Survey of Absent Parents.” Contemporary Policy Issues 8: 75–94.

Williams, Robert G. 1987. Development of Guidelines for Child Support Orders: Advisory Panel Recommendations and Final Report, Office of Child Support Enforcement, United States Department of Health and Human Services.