The Importance Of Child Support Payments

Child Support Payments Can you imagine having a loving family at forty- five and starting your own business? Suddenly, everything you love crumbles before your eyes. Rob Hawkins who was from Newton, North Carolina thought he had it made, until his wife took his two daughters and filed for divorce. His wife took him to court for custody of his kids and for child support. Even though he was starting his own business, his child support payments were based on the job he held the previous year. The wages from the previous job were higher and this left him unable to make his monthly payments. Rob was forced to close his new business and find a different job. He made payments as much as possible but was unable to pay full. The debt accrued extremely …show more content…
According to Dictionary.com child support is defined as, “payment made for the support of the children of divorced or separated parents while the children are minors or until they reach an age set by the separation agreement or in a court order.” The problem that comes with child support is that either parent can enter a courtroom without a job and place a larger financial burden on the other parent. “Courts do not verify where the money is spent all the time, allowing parents receiving it to spend however they wish. Courts can include overtime, bonus, gifts, or retirement pay as part of the calculations for the child support order (Child Support, 2010).” This results in people who are court ordered to pay child support struggle to make their payments because of the ridiculous amount of money they are forced to pay. Society begins labeling people as deadbeat parents because they cannot pay child support that is required. The parent receiving money on the child never pays taxes while the parent paying does. Parents receiving support has the option to begin a new family without financial reductions. The parent paying the support must take their finances into great consideration before beginning a new family. There should never be any question of who is providing the most support for children. Child support should be a set amount and, each parent should be responsible for half of …show more content…
This sounds like a great idea because then the other parent knows that the child is being taken care of and exactly what the money is used for. Court systems would need to form a way that this could be easily tracked. The state of Missouri and a handful of other states have placed support payments on a card. Money can be withdrawn from ATMs and used just like a debit card (child support checks, 2006). This is a step in the right direction for many of the states but by allowing the money to be withdrawn form ATMs makes it hard to say where the money is being spent. Even if courts ordered all states to use the cards only at stores there is no one stopping the parent from reselling the items for cash? People have found ways to cheat government assists before and it would only be a matter of time before they found a way to cheat this. In 2004 there were seven students that were caught cheating financial aid. They applied for a school and never attended classes, then spent the grant money (Seven students, 2004). In a society where people are always out to get ahead there isn’t much they won’t try. If people are able to cheat the financial aid system it wouldn’t be long before they could cheat a documentation system. The other issue is that bills have deadlines and when you used your paycheck for the food in the kitchen and cloths in the