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Child Support

In the United States, two types of child support are available to children. The first (the focus of this entry) is private child support, which is largely regulated by state law. The second is the public assistance or “welfare” system that provides cash support to children in poverty who live apart from a biological parent, usually their father. During the past thirty years, the federal government has taken several steps to strengthen the private child support system, particularly with respect to the treatment of children living in poverty. At the same time, the value of public assistance for children in poverty has dropped by nearly one-third. Overall, these changes have privatized the costs of supporting children and shifted some of the costs of raising children from mothers to fathers.

What is Private Child Support?

The vast majority of the nation's 23 million children who live with one parent live with their single, divorced, or never-married mothers. This is true even though state law is now gender neutral regarding custody arrangements. These mothers are eligible to apply for and receive child support on behalf of that child from the noncustodial biological parent. Even if the custodial parent (almost always the mother) has sufficient funds to support a child, the noncustodial biological parent still must provide financial support. If a child's parents were not married at the time the child was born, however, legal paternity must first be established before an application for child support can be made against the alleged father. If the father denies paternity, a court may order a DNA test to determine whether or not he is the biological father.

Once a child support order is issued by a court, a child is entitled to receive a set amount of money, paid bimonthly or once a month. For low-income mothers and their dependent children, child support is an important source of income. For women receiving child support, it adds an average of $2,000 a year to their family's budget, increasing their total income by 26 percent. In addition, child support reduces the total number of children in poverty by half a million and lessens income inequality among children who are eligible for it. For example, the poverty rate for families who receive all the child support they are owed is 15.2 percent, compared with the 35.7 percent poverty rate for families that do not receive any of the child support they are due.

Child Support and the Law

In the United States, child support policy is a province of state law, so child support systems vary dramatically from state to state. Courts are the main decision makers in these systems. Although state law establishes the duty of noncustodial parents to financially support their children, judges have the authority to decide whether to grant a support order, and if so, for how much. Judges also often decide what sanctions will be taken if the father fails to meet his support obligation. In some jurisdictions, little is done about nonpaying fathers: The burden of collecting overdue support falls to the custodial mother, who must hire an attorney and take the father to court.

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