Child Support Guidelines and Divorce Incentives
نویسنده
چکیده
A child support guideline is a formula used to calculate support payments based on a few family characteristics. Guidelines began replacing court awarded support payments in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and were later mandated by the federal government in 1988. Two fundamentally different types of guidelines are used: percentage of obligor income, and income shares models. This paper explores the incentives to divorce under the two schemes, and uses the NLSY data set to test the key predictions. We find that percentage of obligor income models are destabilizing for some families with high incomes. This may explain why several states have converted from obligor to income share models, and it provides a subtle lesson for the no-fault divorce debate.
منابع مشابه
The Effect on Divorce of Legislated Net-Wealth Transfers
In recent years, legislatures have imposed several types of guidelines restricting court discretion. Guidelines designed around ‘‘average’’ cases, however, can lead to problems for ‘‘nonaverage’’ situations. In the context of divorce, poorly designed child support guidelines may create an opportunity for a netwealth transfer in excess of the costs of children for ‘‘nonaverage’’ families and the...
متن کاملGuidelines for child custody evaluations in divorce proceedings. American Psychological Association, Committee on Professional Practice and Standards (COPPS).
Decisions regarding child custody and other parenting arrangements occur within several different legal contexts, including parental divorce, guardianship, neglect or abuse proceedings, and termination of parental rights. The following guidelines were developed for psychologists conducting child custody evaluation, specifically within the context of parental divorce. These guidelines build upon...
متن کاملThe Economics of Child Custody
I develop a model of marriage in which spouses decide on investments in child quality during marriage, and on the allocation of child custody should they divorce. The custodial allocation determines the share of the marital surplus each spouse appropriates, which in turn influences spouses’ investment incentives. The custodial allocation therefore has both distributional and efficiency conseque...
متن کاملFamily Law E¤ects on Divorce, Fertility and Child Investment1
In order to assess the child welfare impact of policies governing divorced parenting, such as child support orders, child custody and placement regulations, and marital dissolution standards, one must consider their inuence not only on the divorce rate but also on spousesfertility choices and child investments. We develop a continuous time model of marriage, fertility and parenting, with the ...
متن کاملUnilateral Divorce vs. Child Custody and Child Support in the US
There is extensive literature examining changes in divorce rates focusing on the effects of changes in divorce laws. Previous analysis omits reforms that introduced changes in divorce settlements. This might in somehow obscure the impact of unilateral reforms on divorce rates. In this paper, we extend on the previous analyses offering insights on the impact of unilateral divorce on divorce rate...
متن کامل