Contributions from noncustodial fathers and reported change after divorce in the quality of life of mothers and children (original) (raw)
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Most states' child support guidelines adopt a "cliff" model in providing credits or adjustments for time spent in the nonresidential parent's home. Such guidelines implicitly or explicitly assume that no appreciable expenditures are made directly by obligors for child rearing expenses at level of contact or visitation beneath some threshold value, typically assumed to be around 30% time. As guideline developers are acutely aware, these assumptions have proceeded in the absence of any data. The present investigation sought to provide preliminary evidence of such expenditures by using the approach of getting information about the provision of certain benchmark items: clothes, toys and games, bicycles, a bedroom, and support for car-related expenses for teenage drivers. The authors generally found a linear, rather than a cliff-like, relationship of expenditures to time in the nonresidential father's home, with unexpectedly high levels of father's provision of these benchmark items even at quite low levels of contact. These findings support more generous and more continuous adjustments for visitation in child support schemes, to offset nonresidential parent's direct expenditures on children, which appear to be unexpectedly high and arise on a noncliff-like pattern.
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Children in single-parent families, particularly children born to unmarried parents, are at high risk for experiencing material hardship. Previous research based on cross-sectional data suggests that father involvement, especially visitation, diminishes hardship. This article uses longitudinal data to examine the associations between nonresident fathers' involvement with their children and material hardship in the children's households. Results suggest that fathers' formal and informal child support payments and contact with their children independently reduce the number of hardships in the mothers' households; however, only the impact of fathers' contact with children is robust in models that include lagged dependent variables or individual fixed effects. Furthermore, cross-lagged models suggest that material hardship decreases future father involvement, but future hardship is not diminished by father involvement (except in-kind contributions). These results point to the complexity of these associations and to the need for future research to focus on heterogeneity of effects within the population. Today, more than one in four U.S. children (26 percent) lives with only one parent (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Moreover, half of all children born in the last several decades are predicted to spend some portion of their childhood in a single-parent family (Bumpass and Sweet 1989). Further, 41 percent of all births today are to unmarried mothers, and that figure is nearly 70 percent among black mothers (Hamilton, Martin, and Ventura 2009). Although some children in single-parent families live with their fathers, the overwhelming majority (84 percent) live with their mothers and have a living nonresident father (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Research suggests that children growing up in single-parent fam
NON-CHILD SUPPORT EXPENDITURES ON CHILDREN BY NONRESIDENTIAL DIVORCED FATHERS
Family Court Review, 2005
Most states' child support guidelines adopt a "cliff" model in providing credits or adjustments for time spent in the nonresidential parent's home. Such guidelines implicitly or explicitly assume that no appreciable expenditures are made directly by obligors for child rearing expenses at level of contact or visitation beneath some threshold value, typically assumed to be around 30% time. As guideline developers are acutely aware, these assumptions have proceeded in the absence of any data. The present investigation sought to provide preliminary evidence of such expenditures by using the approach of getting information about the provision of certain benchmark items: clothes, toys and games, bicycles, a bedroom, and support for car-related expenses for teenage drivers. The authors generally found a linear, rather than a cliff-like, relationship of expenditures to time in the nonresidential father's home, with unexpectedly high levels of father's provision of these benchmark items even at quite low levels of contact. These findings support more generous and more continuous adjustments for visitation in child support schemes, to offset nonresidential parent's direct expenditures on children, which appear to be unexpectedly high and arise on a noncliff-like pattern.
New Mexico law review, 2002
I. INTRODUCTION In 1990, it was projected that the rate of divorce for couples married in the 1980s and 1990s would be 50%.' In a triumph of hope over experience, most divorced persons go on to marry again. 2 As a result of divorce and remarriage, the 1990 census revealed a portrait of families that is anything but "traditional." Approximately 5.5 million married-couple households contain at least one stepchild under the age of 18. This constitutes 29% of all married-couple households with children. Further, stepchildren make up 20% of all children in married-couple families. 3 The 1996 Current Population Survey, released April 23, 1999, also revealed that in the spring of 1996, 13.7 million custodial parents lived with 22.8 million children under the age of 21; 11.6 million, or 85%, of custodial parents were women, while 2.1 million, or 15%, were men. 4 Detailed information was also available regarding
The NonCustodial Parent: Employment, Earnings, Child Support and Parenting
The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center For Regional Policy Studies, 2001
More than half of this generation of America's children will spend part of their childhood living apart from one parent. Since 1974, the noncustodial parent has had legal responsibility for sharing in the financial support of his or her children. Many noncustodial parents, however, do not or are not able to meet that responsibility. When both the noncustodial parent (NCP) and the custodial parent (CP) are financially unable to provide for the child, then support is often provided by the state in the form of public assistance or welfare. This report examines the characteristics and behavior of noncustodial parents (NCP) who are behind on their payments and with a child on welfare. The analysis focuses on unemployed or under-employed NCPs and is based on a close-ended telephone survey of 874 NCP respondents and 424 CP respondents from Los Angeles County, the county with the largest NCP caseload in the state. The study also uses administrative data from the Los Angeles County's Family Support Bureau (now the Los