It's not supposed to help children. It's supposed to hurt men and discourage them from forming families in the first place. So this policy is doing it's job.

Well it doesn't really stop hispanics from having kids. So I guess I should say this is made to hurt white men and prevent white families from forming.

How is it a surprise that low-income people have more problems?
Income itself is an indicator of how capable a person is!

I suspect that paying the state has become more of a goal than was intended. If you only have a dollar, it cannot be a surprise that if you have to hand it to a state official most of it will disappear.

The state, in divorce cases, acts like a jealous ex; the idea being that to demand/take so much of the ex's income that he/she won't have enough to start another family, thus eliminating potential rivals for limited resources.

In addition, no allowance is made for economic circumstances. When the breadwinner loses his/her job or suffers a loss in income in an intact family, everyone tightens their belts to get through the lean times. When a divorced breadwinner suffers a loss in income, no adjustment is made to the support amount.

I totally get that, Jewish Cat. The state acts in loco jealous ex-is, to borrow from in loco parentis.

It's frustrating how illogical people are when it comes to this.

If the laws gave men cash and prizes for leaving his wife for the babysitter, everyone would immediately recognize that the incentives are ridiculous. Yet we do it for wives, divorce rates increase literally 15 fold, and we wonder why.

A close friend of mine -- an excellent husband and father -- lost his wife to an affair, here is his life.
* he got stuck with her credit card debt.
* house was sold and money split - he had to buy a new house, she moved in with her boyfriend and pocketed her half.
* he had to pay child support even though they have similar incomes and she lives with her affair partner.
* she later married the affair partner and took a lower paying job, so the courts increased her ex husbands payments.

I can't emphasize enough that this is a good faithful husband and father. He has the kids most the time and can't even afford cable television, and her and her new husband frequently travel to places like Hawaii and Paris.

The family courts should be ashamed.

Courts are a terrible place to solve intractable problems such as divorce and custody issues. We can only wish that our society would reinforce values such as working things out reasonably and less selfishly, and that mediation (Yay Amy!)as opposed to court orders will become increasingly effective and utilized. Everyone gets screwed. Right now, a young woman I know, who earns bupkis working with autistic children, is trying to navigate a custody/divorce with her older husband. He's an egomaniac who sees the process as one he needs to "win" on every point, at all costs. He also hides money and on paper plows all of his money back into his business, so that he seemingly earns the same as she does. She was a passive idiot to let things get to this point, letting him be in control of everything. Now how does a court figure this out? She can barely afford any legal advice and certainly can't afford a forensic accountant to figure out where his money really is. She would give up every monetary claim if he would allow generous custody of their four year old but he's fighting for even more than 50-50.

Jewish Cat: So I guess I should say this is made to hurt white men and prevent white families from forming.

I guess that's why the argument against the current child support policies and practices specifies that they "entangle low-income black families in poverty and have become a destabilizing force..."

They have the same harmful, destabilizing effects on low-income white families too, but I guess that fact somehow weakens the argument for reform.

I have seen figures that a large % of men in county jail are there for failure to pay child support. Yeah, the kids will get their money then.

I have seen figures that a large % of men in county jail are there for failure to pay child support. Yeah, the kids will get their money then. ~ cc at July 4, 2019 5:05 PM

So, we're bringing back debtors' prisons? Only this time, we don't have an Australia or a Georgia to which to transport them.

Exactly Ken R. To elaborate on your observation a bit: The reason that the current arguments against anti-male family laws center around black people is that whites are not allowed to make arguments in their own favor.

For example whites can't say affimative action is bad for us because it makes it harder for our childeren to enter the universities their ancestors built. Instead they say affiramtive action hurts asians.

Or like you pointed out they complain about how divorce/paternity laws hurt the black family becasue they can't say it hurts white families.

Or they say Muslim immigration threatens our LGBTQP people; but they dare not say they that mass Muslim immigration hurts normal hetero whites.

If you say a policy hurts whites then the current moral consesus in the country sees that as a good thing. On some level white people understand this so they don't bother to make the case for themselves.

Now I could get into specifics on why the moral consesus is the way it is and how the mass media and academia enforce it but I would be wasting my time. Past experience tells me the commentators here won't believe it.

Seeing how my brother's divorce went really made me weary of having kids. He had a good income...a union utility employee but they took him for everything. For the first three years he had to pay both child support and ex-spouse support. The judge actually wrote that she would award more but then my brother would qualify for state aid so she could not. I didn't know at the time but my parents were supporting him financially.

I have been feeling a bit lonely recently and really wanting a GF but stories like this diminish it a bit... At work the annual anti-harassment training came up...that really puts the dapper on things...certainly not meeting anyone through work or people at work. The new section was particularly interesting...on trans. etc. If you were born male, feel your gender is man, and choose to express yourself masculine you are either cis- unless you identify as trans in which case you are trans.

Meanwhile in Norway, non-custodial parents pay a percentage of their income and if they refuse to pay, the government garnishes the wages based on their income and then pays out an amount depending on the custodial parent’s income but is capped. . If the custodial parent earns more than a certain amount (and it’s not a lot), they lose the benefits. The non-custodial parent does not have to pay child support for more than 5 kids. Kid #6 and up do not get child support. I get the equivalent of 15USD for my son from his father’s garnished wages. And he just bought himself a brand new car and only has one other dependant child living with him.

Seems the law real intent was to wreck the family completely, especially the father.