VISITATION AND CHILD SUPPORT GUIDELINES

Fabricius and Braver argue that nonresident fathers incur appreciable visitation expenses and that their child support obligations should be reduced accordingly. To assess whether fathers incur "appreciable" expenses requires data from mothers and fathers on expenditures in dollar terms rather than data from college students on items kept in the nonresident father's house. The Fabricius and Braver data also overstate the degree to which all divorced fathers do anything for their children. Representative data indicate that father visitation declines substantially over time. Father's postdivorce, post–child support standard of living remains twice that of mothers and children. The cliff model—making adjustments for visitation only in the rare cases of very high shared physical custody—is sensible policy.     

EXAMINING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CHILD ACCESS AND CHILD SUPPORT

This article examines the connection between fathers' access to children and their maintaining child support. Also examined are various approaches to obtaining compliance with support orders. The effect of various factors on payment of support, such as frequency of contact, remarriage, and the length of time since the separation, is analyzed.     

REPORT 4: MEDIATED AGREEMENTS ON CHILD CUSTODY AND VISITATION

This report describes child custody and visitation arrangements and assesses the impact of factors thought to influence the terms of mediated agreements. The data is from the California Snapshot Study conducted in June 1991 and is the fourth in a series of reports concerning this landmark study.     

CHILD SUPPORT GUIDELINES:

Since 1989, federal law requires states to have presumptive child support guidelines and review them using economic data on child-rearing costs at least once every 4 years. This article reviews the child support guidelines models adopted by states, how they relate to estimates of child-rearing expenditures, the extent that states are updating their guidelines, and some of the more controversial guidelines provisions (i.e., adjustments for shared-parenting time, additional dependent children, and low-income nonresidential parents). We find that many states are not updating their core formulas and schedules. As a result, several state guidelines produce support award amounts that are below the costs of raising children.     

CHILD SUPPORT GUIDELINES:

Since 1984, all U.S. jurisdictions have established child support guidelines. Using computerized worksheets, we compared the guidelines of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut (which use the “Income Shares” model also employed by 30 other jurisdictions). We calculated how child care, alimony to a prior spouse, and subsequent children change the support obligation. We found that, generally, Connecticut requires the most child support, New York is second, and New Jersey third. However, if children require child care, New York requires the most support. In Connecticut, child care costs have virtually no impact. When a noncustodial parent is paying alimony to a prior spouse, support is dramatically greater in Connecticut than in New Jersey, with New York in between. Only New Jersey reduces the support paid by the noncustodial parent who has subsequent children. New York's and Connecticut's mathematical guidelines do not consider subsequent children.     

THE AUSTRALIAN CHILD SUPPORT AGENCY:

The Australian Child Support Agency is recognized as a world leader in the delivery of child support services. But the rapid growth in debt between 1998 and 2003 signaled a need to develop strategies to counter the growth in owed child support. A Debt Study was undertaken in late 2002 to establish the collectibility of debt by category of cases with debt, search for the most cost-effective methods of debt collection, and determine if other client and debt segmentation methods were warranted. The success of the Debt Study led to the implementation of the Intensive Debt Collection strategy in 2003–04.     

NON–CHILD SUPPORT EXPENDITURES ON CHILDREN BY NONRESIDENTIAL DIVORCED FATHERS

Most states' child support guidelines adopt a "cliff" model in providing credits or adjustments for time spent in the nonresidential parent's home. Such guidelines implicitly or explicitly assume that no appreciable expenditures are made directly by obligors for child-rearing expenses at levels of contact or visitation beneath some threshold value, typically assumed to be around 30% time. As guideline developers are acutely aware, these assumptions have proceeded in the absence of any data. The present investigation sought to provide preliminary evidence of such expenditures by using the approach of getting information about the provision of certain benchmark items: clothes, toys and games, bicycles, a bedroom, and support for car-related expenses for teenage drivers. The authors generally found a linear, rather than a cliff-like, relationship of expenditures to time in the nonresidential father's home, with unexpectedly high levels of father's provision of these benchmark items even at quite low levels of contact. These findings support more generous and more continuous adjustments for visitation in child support schemes, to offset nonresidential parent's direct expenditures on children, which appear to be unexpectedly high and arise on a non-cliff-like pattern.     

SAME‐SEX MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE: A PROPOSAL FOR CHILD CUSTODY MEDIATION*

Same‐sex marriage is a contentious, politically charged issue full of diverse, complicated considerations. In 2003, Massachusetts joined the list of jurisdictions to legalize same‐sex marriage, the first in the U.S. Now that same‐sex couples can marry in particular international jurisdictions, governments must address how to sensitively allow these couples to divorce. Same‐sex couples have a unique set of needs and issues, most clearly demonstrated if children are involved in the marriage. This Note argues for the creation of mediation programs in American jurisdictions with same‐sex marriage, to specifically determine child custody agreements upon divorce.     

1995 MEYER ELKIN ESSAY CONTEST WINNER IMPACT OF EXPEDITED VISITATION SERVICES,A COURT PROGRAM THAT ENFORCES ACCESS

The impact of a court service that is set up to enforce access orders is measured from the perspective of 70 children whose parents were program participants in the service. Children's perception of conflict diminished significantly over the 6-month period of service involvement. Children improved in their overall and school adjustment when visits with their noncustodial parents were more frequent. They were less depressed when they had quality relationships with both their mother and father. Children perceived more conflict as visits increased, but the negative impact was minimal.     

SUPERVISED VISITATION: A CALL FOR A SECOND GENERATION OF RESEARCH

With the divorce rate rising and related child visitation disputes becoming an increasingly difficult issue before the courts, supervised visitation programs have proliferated over the last decade. The literature demonstrates that ongoing contact between children and both parents following separation and/or divorce is important for children's socio‐emotional adjustment and positive child/parent relations. However, there is a paucity of literature demonstrating a relationship between supervised visitation programs and child/parent relationship outcomes. Based on the lack of outcome research the authors argue for a second generation of research regarding intended and unintended consequences of supervised visitation. This article reviews and synthesizes the current literature, highlighting strengths, limitations, significant findings and proposes a critical need for evidence‐based research.     

ESTABLISHING LAND ASSEMBLY DISTRICTS: A PROPOSAL TO CHINESE LAW ON RURAL LAND TAKINGS

Chinese local governments have taken many rural lands in order to promote urbanization and modernization of the local rural areas, which, unfortunately, has given rise to many social conflicts. The current Chinese land taking laws have provided some guidance on the use of taking power, including the public interest requirement and the compensation requirement. However, these requirements are still insufficient. As can be observed from a series of cases, the fragmented ownership of rural residents caused a problem of anticommons, leading to huge transaction costs in the negotiation between governments and villagers. The mechanism of Land Assembly Districts, proposed by Professor Michael Heller and Ricks Hills, might be an effective way to handle this problem, since it can produce a relatively fair compensation for villagers, facilitate dialogue and communication, and prevent opportunism. This article considers the possibility of adopting this proposal by allowing the village committee to act collectively to negotiate the level of compensation with the Chinese local governments. This approach might effectively resolve numerous conflicts that arose in Chinese land taking events. The article also addresses the potential concern that the collective action might infringe upon the property rights of some dissenting villagers, from both theoretical and practical perspectives.