I was reminded of the thought expressed in the title to this post the other day, which provoked me to update some older posts that decomposed and explained Title IV-D bonuses and incentives to states (Federal Title IV-D funds are bonuses and incentives paid to states for maximizing, collecting, enforcing, and administering child support payments).
Certainly the incentive pool portion of Federal Title IV-D program is sizable; $500 million annually split up between states and territories. But, let’s not get hung up on that.
California, for example, received $490 million in Federal Title IV-D bonuses and reimbursements in 2012 (the last year any data was published).
Now, let’s consider the question: What would the presumption of 50/50 parenting after divorce mean to California?
Well, it’s plausible it’ll mean a dramatic reduction in both parental conflict and child support pools to administer, which in turn means funding will dry up, which also means you’ll have a whole lot of government lawyers, support staff, and bureaucrats sitting around with nothing to do and and no federal funding to pay them.
Recently, we’ve been beating the drum that we have to abandon any notion that moral appeals will sway legislators to do the right thing for parents and children. Granted, when you see the harm done by existing family law, and especially to children, one should expect moral arguments to be persuasive, but after twenty years of trying, it’s clear they are falling on deaf ears.
The short story version: Courts are ordering absent parents (and harming children) so they can use noncustodial parents to fund a system that pays government to create absent parents for money.
That’s some beautiful, circular, self serving logic; and all the while, they have to gall to shame non-custodial parents for being absent even as these NCP’s are bankrupting themselves by fighting to stay in the lives of their children.
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