Title IV-D, Child Support, U.S. States, And The Non-Custodial Family

It is almost 2014, and we still meet people who have no idea about the Title IV-D system under the Social Security Act as it relates to child support enforcement, U.S. States, social services and non-custodial families. This article is written specifically to educate these families on why we believe you are unable to get equal parentage of your children. However, it is important to keep in mind that Title IV-D is not the only spoke in the wheel of denial to equal parenting, as there are other measures in place that benefit groups like lawyers who benefit when parents fight in the courts for 18 years and domestic violence groups who have actually capitalized on violence and need it to exists so that they can generate statistics at the end of the year, send to Congress, who then gives them money.

So lets take a look at the Title IV-D system as it relates to child support enforcement and see if you non-custodial families can pick up on why you have little chance at getting shared parenting of your children.

http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title04/0458.htm

Pursuant to this legislation, conveniently names “Incentive Payments To States”, each U.S. State in America are given an incentive to collect as much child support as they can, and in doing so, will be rewarded by the U.S. government with a match of federal money they can then use for social services programs.

In the early days of child support enforcement, this made sense because collection was aimed at parents who purposefully abandoned their children and family thereby causing the other parent many times to go on Welfare. Title IV-D was a way for States to maintain social services programs for needy parents who were abandoned.

Then all U.S. States got smart and realized that if they get money on each dollar collected in child support, there was an incentive for parents to not have equal parentage of their children so that they would then pay more child support and trigger more federal money for States who are seeing unprecedented amounts of parents who are on Welfare where THEY WERE NOT ABANDONED, BUT WORKED VIA THE FAMILY COURTS TO APPEAR ABANDONED so they could get access to food assistance, daycare assistance, housing assistance, job assistance, education assistance, medical/dental assistance, and tax incentives.

What the States have essentially done is created a system where a divorcing parent who needs social services programs to exists must find a way to make the other parent appear to be a parent who has abandoned the family, or be the most horrible person in the world so that he/she can get custody.

Basically, U.S. States would lose tremendous amounts of federal money if parents were allowed to have equal parentage. Keep in mind that for a parent paying $600 a month in child support, he/she triggers $600 a month in federal money used by social services.

Once non-custodial parent paying $600 a month triggering federal money essentially makes $300 a month in food stamps available to two recipients. And, it isn’t hard to see that U.S. States have become completely dependent of Title IV-D legislation.

It should also be noted that parents paying child support and triggering Title IV-D money who’s children are not on Welfare, it is a net profit to the system.

U.S. States know that if there was family law reform and parents who wanted to directly support their children via equal parenting, they would pay little if any child support which in turn would mean less federal money.