Should there be an upper bound on some components of child support payments? [View All]

[Boojatta]

Consider the part of court-ordered child support payments that are to cover just the child's costs for food, clothing, and transportation. Should there be a maximum that a court would be allowed to order a non-custodial parent to pay to cover a child's costs for food, clothing, and transportation?

We're talking about a possible upper bound on how much a court could legally order a specific person to pay for specific purposes. Such a law would not prevent anyone from contributing money for the child's care or put any legal restriction on the total amount of money spent for care of the child.

Suppose there is no maximum per month for food, clothing, and transportation. Suppose that the total child support payment amount must always begin as a percentage of parental gross income before some adjustments are made. Then doesn't the law mandate something like a class system? If an ordinary eight-year old child who happens to be the child of a high-income earner can be said to -- in the opinion of legislators (!) -- "need" $3,000 per month for food, clothing, and transportation, then is there any reason to suppose that any reform of any kind will take place?

Don't expect the ratio between CEO salaries and ordinary salaries to change. That's a matter for the discretion of the boards of directors. When the eight-year-old reaches adulthood, surrounded by other such adults, who is going to have the courage to say to those adults, "Enough, no increase this year or next"?

Corporations might soon take the hint from legislators and vote for new by-laws: "The basic CEO support responsibility is based, in part, on the gross revenue of the corporation. The guideline was put in the by-law to make sure that the corporation pays an amount for support that is actually close to what it costs to care for a CEO. See the table below for percentages and for exceptional circumstances that will allow for a temporary downward adjustment in the corporation's support responsibility."

I did a quick search for New York State information (for regular people, not for legal experts) and found the following:

Your basic child support responsibility is based, in part, on your gross income. If you have certain reductions, your income for child support purposes is reduced or “adjusted.”

The court multiplies your “adjusted” gross income amount by the guideline percentage for the number of children for which you are ordered to pay. These percentages are:

17% for one child
(...)

In each case, a share of child care, medical, and educational expenses are added to the appropriate percentage and the resulting number is the basic child support amount. The guideline was put in the law to make sure that people pay an amount for support that is actually close to what it costs to care for a child.

Source:
https://newyorkchildsupport.com/publications.html

Note: that's 17% of ... an arbitrary number! It could be 17% of $1500 per month or 17% of $17,647.06 per month. Yet, they say it is "close to what it costs to care for a child." Is it? Is it really?

(Of course, if there were such an upper bound, then the amount would be adjusted for inflation. It wouldn't be a fixed number of dollars per month for all time. The amount of child support would be the total of various costs. Food, clothing, and transportation are just part of that total.)