Child Support

No kid grows up and thinks how much money was spent on them yet every kid remembers how much time was spent with their parents.

Child Support assumes that one parent cares for the kid while the other pays for their care and the statistics show that fathers are the primary child support obligors. In 2018, New York State collected over $783 million dollars alone via the child support system. Meanwhile the system is still broken.

Debt and The Threat Of Jail Time: A Perpetual Cycle:

Punitive policies trap poor (mostly) men in a cycle of debt, unemployment and imprisonment. One of the major problems with the current child support system is that when a case starts, child support orders can exceed a parent’s ability to pay without regard for their own expenses. While states have created formulas to determine orders often those guidelines are ignored and orders are established at an amount greater than the state mandate. In instances where parents fall behind on payments, authorities increase collection efforts up to and including 65% of an obligor’s wages, seizing deposits, tax refunds as well as suspension of one’s driver’s license, professional license and even jail time.

We have to find a better way.

The First Child Support Initiative Began in 1975

The first child support initiative began in 1975 when the government established Section IV-D of the Social Security Act to re-create the nuclear family post-divorce. We are approaching nearly 50 years of a system that exists in a world that looks differently than when it was first created. With more than $113 Billion in uncollected child support, the solution has to be different.