CHILD SUPPORT
"Your goal is legitimate and right and just. You need to demonstrate your clout to the politicians." . . . . . . Phyllis Schlafly, 12/11/05, on PEP-Talk radio
A READER WRITES:
“What about child support? I’m a custodial parent. I don’t think
my ex-husband is a bad dad. He’s not even a bad man. He never did
do bad things to me or my two children when we were married, he and
I just didn’t belong together. Now I’m a single mom and I need that
child support check to live. How can your ideas about equality be
right if I can’t afford to take care of my children?”
PEP RESPONDS:
Wait a moment. (And this isn’t PEP being picky about
words.) The children aren’t yours are they? Wasn’t your
former husband around somewhere when they were conceived? The
children in question are yours and his. Unless you and your former
husband are to be treated unequally before the law, there has to be
some permissible reason for dividing the kids time unequally between
you. Divorce, in and of itself, isn’t enough.
We need to consider a few things before answering your
exact question.
If politicians get their way, they’ll control labels so
that they get away with murder (sometimes real murder … as any
historian will tell you who’s studied the French Revolution and
knows what Robespierre did with “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality”).
Labeling money “child support” may or may not be truthful. But,
labeling money that the state forces one citizen to give to another
citizen a state "forced asset transfer" (FAT) is truthful.
The question then becomes deciding under what situations such
political FAT are examples of justice, or, instead, are simple exercises
in raw power. This is really important because as long as the label
“child support” goes unchallenged, our political system will grovel
before the idol of this particular political FAT. We must
not allow this. Americans don’t worship government programs.
Americans think carefully – and if something doesn’t withstand
careful thought, it has to be fixed.
This issue has become the third rail in contemporary American
politics. Virtually all politicians know the custody system doesn’t
work, know it’s unfair, know it’s injuring innocent citizens, and
know it’s injuring a generation of American children. Some even
suspect it’s unconstitutional. But outside of a couple states like
Oklahoma, none are doing anything about it other than minor tinkering.
Why? Three reasons.
First, the politicians that write our custody laws are divorce
lawyers. Connect the dots.
Second, the states are addicted to federal funds – and in an era of
strained budgets, most states don’t want to cut into the sweet
little business they’ve got going from "child-support collections"
under 42 U.S.C. §654, which is a program that passes federal money
(i.e., your taxes) to state governments to fund state bureaucracies
that have the job of ... getting more federal money. Under this plan hawked to
us by the Clintons in 1996 when they "reinvented welfare as we know
it" (described in 42 U.S.C. §654) state and federal bureaucracies –
knowingly or not – are in the business of converting as much private
assets to public funding as possible. Money for state bureaucracies
is the underlying reason that state governments refuse to treat all
fit parents equally. Are we destroying the traditional family
and ruining part of a generation of children in the process?
Oh well ... call it collateral damage.
Third: Political cowardice.
Too many of our politicians (i.e., our employees) are afraid that during the
next election cycle they’ll be accused of being anti-child support.
Accusing a politician of being anti-child support has become today’s
equivalent of being called “soft on communism” in the 1950s, or
“liberal” in the early 21st century. Hang an anti-child
support label on a politician today and it’s Buh-Bye political
career.
Too many of our politicians aren’t leaders anymore, they’re nervous weathermen with
wet fingers trembling in the political wind all the time. So, it’s up
to us to do what they won’t: Have an honest conversation about a
touchy subject. This subject is like good ol’ Aunt Rena’s
alcoholism used to be inside the American family: It’s the thing
we all know about … but just don’t discuss. Fortunately, we’ve
learned that not discussing Aunt Rena’s “problem” doesn’t work. The
problem isn’t going to magically go away, it’ll only get worse, and
not talking about it only makes everyone else in the family have to
adjust in dysfunctional ways to booze. This is the kind of
dysfunctional adjustment that America has made to child support.
So, how about we citizens just cut it out? How about we stop the
dysfunctional adjustment to a broken system and, instead, have a
cards-on-the-table talk? Sound good? Ready to air it all out?
Ready to get a problem solved by facing up to it the way our
politicians won’t? So is PEP.
Let’s start by dispelling a distortion that PEP’s
opponents are spreading. PEP is not against child support. There
are many circumstances in which child support is perfectly correct.
There are some in which it isn’t.
Perfectly correct: A parent with a fundamental right to
parent his/her children is getting divorced from a spouse with that
identical right—and doesn’t want to exercise his/her fundamental
right equally with the other parent.
Perfectly correct: A parent with a fundamental right to
parent his/her children is getting divorced from a spouse with that
identical right—and is proved by Clear and Convincing evidence to be
unfit because of acts of child abuse or neglect.
Perfectly correct: A parent with a fundamental right to
parent his/her children is getting divorced from a spouse with that
identical right—and insists on relocating rather than staying in the
near vicinity of where the kids are now (the only location that
preserves each parent’s fundamental right, automatically).
Not correct: A parent with a fundamental right to
parent his/her children is getting divorced from a spouse with that
identical right – and s/he wants to be a full Equal Parent …but the
state won’t let her/him because the state knows there’s no
justification for a forced asset transfer in that situation. This
person should not pay child support. What s/he spends on the child
during the 50% of the time the child is with her/him is child
support. (Incidentally, the money this parent spends on her/his
child today is also child support … but the state refuses to count
it because doing so would lower the amount of the forced asset
transfer … which would lower the state’s claim for federal kickbacks
for child support “collections” under 42 U.S.C. §654.)
Now we’re in a position where we can tackle your
question directly. (Remember, we're talking only about two fit
parents, not child abusers or those that neglect their children or
those that engage in criminal activities against their spouses.
Each of those is a categorically distinct situation from the
ordinary no fault divorce.) What if a divorced parent can’t get along
financially without child support? Shouldn’t that be enough to kill
Equal Parental Responsibility right there? There are two practical answers to
this question, and one moral one.
First the practical answers:
1. If you can’t afford to leave a marriage, don’t get divorced until
you can. Try to improve and preserve your marriage, and in the
meantime, get yourself ready to take care of yourself by yourself,
and take care of your kids during the 50% period that they’re with
you if you decide you have to get divorced after doing your best to
preserve your marriage. (Studies indicate, by the way, that people
who are on the verge of divorce but who decide to stick it out are
overwhelmingly happier in the marriage five years later. Apparently
a LOT of No Fault divorces are more like out-of-control high school
breakups than truly necessary dissolutions of a foundational social
institution.)
2. Although within an Equal Parental Responsibility regime child support as such
would probably not pass a test of constitutionality under the
Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 5th Amendment,
if states are determined to make divorce easy, they can
always mandate alimony. Alimony’s ugly, of course. But it has the
advantage of being honest. (Honesty in government? What a
concept! This makes me remember a famous quip from Gandhi
in another context, when he was asked what he thought about Western
Civilization. “It’s a great idea. Some nation ought to try it.”)
Now, the moral answer to your question.
“It’s the economy, stupid.” Remember a recent
successful campaign for the presidency based on that bumpersticker
saying? Well, there’s surely nothing wrong with a high-powered
economy. If at all possible, I vote that we all die rich. But …
When it comes to truly fundamental questions about our
humanity and about the kind of nation America is supposed to be …
it can never be about the economy.
To leave a marriage and then hold a former spouse’s
relationship to his/her children hostage to finances
… that’s morally bankrupt. And for states to back this up with
the force of law ... is worse.
When Martin Luther King gave his
famous I Have A Dream speech, he got the supreme moral and
constitutional issue of his time exactly right. He knew
that many different complaints and questions would be raised about equal rights.
But he also knew that, in the final analysis, the issue came down to
one fundamental and inescapable question: Would America live out the true implications of her
basic creed? Yes or no?
That’s the
bottom line here too. And there’s only
one answer. In America, no fit parent’s relationship to his or her
child can be held hostage to finances.
