Child Support Laws-What Every Parent Should Know About Child Support Guidelines

Before looking at the child support laws as they exist today in the United States and how they influence child support guidelines, lets first take a look at how those laws evolved.
Prior to the enactment of the current child support laws and child support guidelines as a consequence the amount of child support to be paid was decided by the courts.

The Judge, in determining the child support amount, looked at two principal factors:

1) The ability of the parent to pay

2) The needs of the child

The major problems arising from this approach to child support payments was inconsistency. Different judges awarded very differing amounts and this led to a number of problems.

Principal among these was the lack of urgency in parents in reaching an agreement as to child support as they felt it was worth their while taking their chances in court.

In addition this led to serious inconsistency of child support orders and a lack of respect with the result that the parent who should be paying simply was not.

Because of this lack of respect and failure to pay the Federal Government was left to pick up the tab for non paying parents as it had a program called the Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The inconsistent payment orders made by courts and subsequent non payment left Federal Government with a rising bill which it became increasingly concerned about.

This led to the setting up of the Aid For Dependent Child program (AFDC) which provided for Federal government providing funds to states for dependent children. But only if the states concerned adopted guidelines which were approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Congress then passed the Family Support Act(FSA) in 1974 requiring states to adopt and enforce child support obligations. Each state receiving AFDC funds had to set up a child support enforcement agency which was tasked to enforce the guidelines laid down by the Office of Child Support Enforcement.

In 1984 Congress passed the Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984 (CSEA) which obliged states to beef up their child support enforcement powers. You can read about the work of the Office of Child Support enforcement elsewhere on this site.

This 1984 legislation also compelled the Office of Child Support Enforcement to set up an advisory panel on child support guidelines. It also forced states to set up guidelines and formulae to decide the appropriate child support payments to be made in each case.

And these guidelines were then made available to the courts and family law officials to help determine the right amount of child support to be made in the order of the court. These guidelines were to be advisory only.

Family Support Act, 1988

Following on from the child support guidelines which the Office of Child Support Enforcement drew up Congress passed the Family Support Act in 1988.

This act provided for the states implementing presumptive rather than advisory guidelines.

This means that there is a rebuttable presumption in law in each state that to correct amount of child support to be awarded is correct provided that the guidelines of each state are used to make the calculation.

Federal law also requires that the states set out the criteria where applying the guidelines would be unjust in any particular case in order to rebut the presumption that the amount is correct.

Furthermore the guidelines are to be used when adjudicating on any application for modification of a child custody order.

In 1996 Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) which provided for grants to the states called the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families instead of the previous AFDC payments.

This act also made provision for child support enforcement by setting up paternity establishment procedures, improving inter state enforcement of child support orders, setting up registries for support orders, forcing the states to bring in tougher enforcement measures such as the placement of liens on professional and occupational licences.

The PRWORA legislation had as it’s primary purpose the enforcement of child support orders and not the determination of child support payments.