Child Support Lottery

There is a case that was decided recently in a family law matter.  The parents had split up and the three kids were with the mother.  Not surprisingly, the mother wanted child support.  That is appropriate. The court had to decide how much support to award for the three children to be able to maintain the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed.

Determining the amount of child support has become a lot easier in recent years.  There are child support guidelines that are used.  You simply need the amount of the payor's annual income, look up on the chart and find the amount of support that is to be paid.  It's a very simple system.

The problem with simple systems is that they ignore the unusual situations and make simple assumptions.  For example, it does not matter if the payor has three children from another relationship. The amount owing is dependent on the income and the number of children in the relationship before the courts.

Here's the problem: the father makes piles of money and has annual earnings of several million dollars.  The judge applied the formula in the guidelines and made the order for child support of $59,500.00.  Yes, that is tax-free, and that is per month. That's $714,000.00 tax-free dollars per year to support the three children. That's $1,956.16 per day, every day.  Who needs 6/49?  The mother has a winning ticket for as long as the children need support!

This is only child support, not spousal support.  The mother may very well get a spousal support order, which is designed to ensure that she is able to maintain a lifestyle to which she has become accustomed.  Child support is not intended to be a redistribution of wealth between spouses.

What I want to know is this: what is a lifestyle where you spend $238,000 per year per child?  Private schools, all expenses included, wouldn't be more than $40,000 per year.  Even after paying all possible living expenses (tutors, hockey, clothes, food etc.), you still have to pay out a whopping allowance to the kids to go through that amount of cash.  (I am reminded of the Richie Rich comics where Master Richie got his allowance in a wheelbarrow!)

The child support guidelines have a provision that allows the amount to be varied if the guideline amount is "inappropriate". For some strange reason, at least one judge in another case has decided that "inappropriate" means only "not enough" and cannot mean "too much". The "inappropriate" clause is now an example of affirmative action: it's OK to discriminate against the one group, but not the other.

Not surprisingly, the father in this case argued that $714,000.00 per year was "inappropriate" for child support.  What is surprising is that he lost. 

Count on the case being appealed.  Let's hope that the appeal court knows how to properly define "inappropriate".