CS Reform Issues: Accountability

This is the second installment of my series on current child support issues.

One of the frustrations experienced by non-custodial parents paying child support is the lack of accountability required on the part of the obligee. It is reasonable for someone who is paying one-third (or more) of their household income to expect at the very least some accounting as to how that money is being used to benefit their children; i.e. the "level of service" they are getting for their money if you will, to put it into commercial parlance.

However, the Court puts no mandate on the obligee to account for expenditures. In fact, most Courts would deem it harassment if the obligor even inquired as to how the child support funds were used by the obligee. One reason oft cited for this is that it is too much work for the obligee to have to do this. Strange: the court doesn't seem to think it is too difficult for the obligee to keep track of uninsured medical expenses so they can soak the obligor for half, nor is it too complicated for the State to keep track of exactly how much the obligor has paid in support, who they are working for for garnishment purposes, or what their bank accounts are (so they can be seized for non-payment of support).

The NH child support calculation is contrived to appear that both parents' incomes are used to determine a "total amount available for support" of the children. However, the entire contents of this "virtual" pot of money is given to the custodial parent to administer. Why then is the custodian of this money (which is a considerable fraction of the parents' combined incomes) not required to account for its use? This is like handing over your entire savings to a stock broker, then not being told how much is in your portfolio. Madness!

My opinion is if the NH-DYCS can collect money from an obligor parent and give it to the obligee parent, then it would not be much of a stretch (or any stretch for that matter) for them to collect from BOTH parents (as stated in the NH Child Support guideline calculation), then distribute as needed to BOTH parents. Such distributions would be made based on direct child-cost expenses submitted by parents.

For example, if each parent maintains a home suitable for raising the children, each parent would submit VALIDATED proof of their housing cost (e.g. a mortgage payment stub and property tax bill). Some reasonable formula could then be applied to reimburse each parent proportionally to their respective contributions to the children's homes. Note that in this case, "amount of time" spent with the children is irrelevant, since a mortgage or rent payment must be made regardless of whether a child is in the home 10% or 90% of the time.

Alternatively, a simpler solution could just be to distribute the total based on "amount of time" each parent has custody of the children. This makes even more sense when one considers that NH has legally dropped the distinction between "custodial" and "non-custodial" parents, and the concept of "visitation" by the non-custodial parent. Parents are now "co-parents", and thus presumably both are entitled legally to child support. An additional benefit is that if the principal custodian parent (i.e. more than 50% of custody time with children) has a significantly higher income, then the other parent could potentially get a support stipend to offset their costs when children are in their care.

Such a system would solve almost all issues surrounding accountability concerns, and insure that all child support moneys are available to both parents to raise children, and maintain an equitable quality of life in both of the children's homes.