Where does my child support go?
It makes a lot of sense that a person paying child support will want some reassurance that the money they are paying is being used for the direct benefit of the children. Sometimes clients ask me if the support money can go into a joint account for child-related spending, or if they can request an accounting of the money. Other clients have asked me if, when the child is older, if the support can be paid directly to the child. The hard-to-hear answer to all these questions is no. You can’t oversee the way that your co-parent spends the child support money. There are important practical and policy reasons for this.
Defining Child-related Expenses.
One of the principles behind child support is that the child’s quality of life will not be seriously impacted because one parent earns less than the other. The Massachusetts child support guidelines his designed to calculate payment based on the relative incomes of the parents. The result is generally that the lesser-earning parent will have enough money to support the child or children in a comparable way to how they were living during the marriage. The guidelines cite the following principle, “meeting the child’s survival needs in the first instance, but, to the extent either parent enjoys a higher standard of living, allowing the child to enjoy that higher standard.”
With this in mind, how would “child-related expenses” be defined? School activity costs? Easy yes. Kids’ clothes? Again, easy yes. Or is it? What about these sunglasses?
No?
What’s the reasonable alternative? This lifetime supply for $44?
What about the mortgage or rent? Obviously shelter is necessary, but we are not going to scrutinize a parent’s rental payment as being excessive just because something cheaper is available. Who decides? I would submit that the the only arbiter worse than the judge is your ex.
Reasonable needs
The question of reasonable needs does hit a ceiling of course. When the parents are very high earners, the argument often arrives at the “three-pony rule” – meaning, no child needs more than three ponies.
Privacy. After a divorce, the parents are entitled to privacy in their affairs. That includes spending. And oftentimes, spending related to the kids and spending related to the parents are hard to disentangle. Although you will have to disclose financial information if you are going back to court, allowing one parent to oversee the spending of child support opens every decision the recipient parent makes to the judgment of the other parent – then litigation in court.
What if the grocery receipt shows that the parent bought a case of Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies? Six bags of Sweet ‘n Tangy BBQ Doritos? Dog food? It is impractical to consider itemized accounting of spending with money that is comingled and costs that are comingled, while still preserving some measure of privacy and keeping the focus on the children’s best interests.
I find that a lot of my work involves giving unwanted answers to questions grounded in peoples’ fair and reasonable worries. It can be helpful to remember that the courts are publicly funded institutions there to assist in our big picture problems. Imagine the reaction to taxpayer-funded forensic accountants, resolving disputes over donuts and dog food all day long. Nobody wants that.
