What is Child Support?

Child support is the annuity payment that the non custodian parent makes to the custodian parent for the upbringing of the child after separation. The separation can be because of divorce or other causes and the child support money is over and above the alimony whose purpose is to maintain the spouse. However, unlike alimony which can only be claimed in marriages in some jurisdictions it is enough to establish paternity or maternity for the courts to have to order child support. We will get to borrowing using child support in a tick.

In the United States each state independently ascertains the value of child support that the non custodian parent should bear. While in some states this money has to be directly paid viz. the non custodian parent pays to the custodian parent in other states the support money is collected by the state as though it were a tax and then distributed to the parents. There is a tax deduction that can also be claimed when one is spending money on child support. Different states have different ways and means to calculate the child support and the two main ways are determining child support based on the needs of the child or determining child support based on the ability of the parent. While each state has got standard guidelines of calculating child support the courts can deviate in special cases.

One common grudge that the non custodian parents have is in most of the states there is no way of determining how the money is being spent on the child and there is next to no accountability. However in at least 10 states in the US (Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington) provide the provision where the court can ask the custodian parent to produce the statement which shows how the support dollars were spent on the child.

Defaulting on Child Support Plans

Non-custodial parents who end up avoiding payment on their child support obligations are called deadbeat parents. While this is a prejudice and the common opinion is that these people are simply running away from responsibility, most of the time the parents who are defaulting are either not in a capacity to pay or feel that the obligations that they have is unjustified as the money is not going towards paying for the childs maintenance and upbringing at all.

Borrowing using Child Support

Government supports Child support by providing them grants and loans that can be used for people in low-income groups to maintain their obligations towards child support.

If you do not have enough cash, you can also pay towards child support borrowing through your credit card and making payments directly through the card. Normally, if you are going to make this payment the rates that apply will be somewhere around 2.5% depending on which service or bank you are using. This should only be an option for people who have no cash to do so because the rate of interest makes it more expensive and the fact that it has to be paid month by month does not help either because interest keeps piling up.

Typically, only those parents who fall behind on their child support payments use this option. The reason for this is while you may appeal to the court that because of the change in your circumstances you would like the child support amount to be modified downwards there is no provision for making that happens retrospectively. For instance suppose you were to lose your job today and went jobless for eight months before finding a new job. Let's also say your child support was $300 per month, which you were not able to pay for the last six months and have asked for a downward revision. So while the plea for your downward revision may be accepted you will still be needed to pay the full arrears of $1800. In such a situation there is no option for the parent but to borrow using a credit card.