How many people pay child support in the us

How much child support do parents actually receive?

About 30% of parents who are owed child support payments get nothing, according to data from the Census Bureau.

One in five children in the US live in households that receive child support payments. In 2017^[1], the 5.4 million parents who were owed child support payments received 62% of the amount they were supposed to get, on average.

The median amount received was $1,800, though 1.6 million, or 30% received no child support at all. About 46% of parents with child support agreements get all of what is owed to them.

Black children live with one biological parent at a disproportionate rate compared with other racial or ethnic groups. But those families are also less likely to receive child support payments.

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What is child support?

The child support program was established in the US in 1975 to ensure that children who live with only one of their biological parents are financially taken care of. Child support is meant to ensure the parent who does not live with the child or does not have custody of the child will financially contribute to the child’s upbringing. Child support payment amounts vary depending on the incomes of the two parents, among other factors.

How much child support do recipients actually receive?

Seventy percent of custodial parents received some or all of the child support payments they were supposed to get in 2017. About 46% received the full amount while the other 24% received part of that amount. The median amount that custodial parents were supposed to receive was $4,356 per year, but the median received was $1,800.

Some factors make it more likely for a custodial parent to get the full amount of child support owed. Parents who share custody are more likely to receive full child support payments. This is also true if the custodial parent is 40 years or older, or if they have a bachelor’s degree.

If a child is in contact with their noncustodial parent within the last year, the custodial parent is more likely to receive the full child support payment as well.

How are child support payment amounts decided?

In 2021, the child support program collected $32.7 billion, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). About 66% of this money was collected directly from the paychecks of parents obligated to provide child support. For custodial parents receiving cash assistance through programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, some states keep portions of the child support to “repay” the state. Child support orders are usually decided during divorce or custody legal proceedings. Parents can also apply for child support payments at any time through each state's independent application processes. About 50% of all custodial parents have child support agreements with the noncustodial parent.

After a parent has applied for child support, state child support agencies help parents find the other biological parent, establish paternity or maternity, decide what an appropriate child support payment would be, and enforce that the payments are being made.

How child support payments are calculated differs by state. Most states use an income-shares model, which considers both parents' income and the amount of time the child spends with each parent to determine payment amounts. Other states base payment amounts solely on the noncustodial parent’s income. There isn’t a state or federal government data set that collects or calculates the average child support payment by state.

Who benefits from child support payments?

In 2018, 14.7 million children lived in households receiving child support payments, about 1 in 5 children in the US, according to HHS. These children account for about two-thirds of the 21. 9 million children under 21 who had a parent who lived outside of their household.

Children who live with only one biological parent are disproportionately likely to be living in poverty, according to Census data. Twenty four percent of custodial parent families lived in poverty compared with 14% of all families with children under 21 years old. According to HHS’ Office of Child Support Enforcement, child support lifts 750,000 people out of poverty each year. An analysis from the Census Bureau disagrees with HHS, saying parents who receive child support are not statistically more or less likely to be in poverty than those who do not.

Eighty percent of parents with primary custody, i.e. custodial parents, were mothers, though the rate of fathers with sole custody has been rising. While fathers were 16% of custodial parents in 1994, that rate rose to 20% in 2018. Custodial fathers are more likely to be divorced while custodial mothers are more likely to never have been married. Fifty-one percent of custodial mothers had child support orders or agreements compared with 41% of custodial fathers.

The number of parents owed child support has decreased since it peaked in 2003 when 7.3 million parents were supposed to receive child support. In 2017, this number dropped to 5.4 million, a decrease of 26%.

What is the racial breakdown of child support recipients?

In 2017, Black children were more than twice as likely as white children to live in a home with one custodial parent while the other parent lives outside the household, according to Census data. Forty-nine percent of Black children and about 23% of white children lived in such a household.

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While Black children are more likely to be living with one custodial parent than white, non-Hispanic children, they’re less likely to have a child support agreement.

Forty percent of Black custodial parents had child support orders compared with 57% of non-Hispanic white custodial parents.

One possible reason for the lower numbers of child support orders is the disproportionately higher rate of Black men in prisons. Over half of all incarcerated people are parents and about 33% of parents in prison were Black as of 2016. In many states, it is logistically infeasible to locate and establish the paternity of an incarcerated parent through the state child support system and it also can be challenging to start a child support order when the noncustodial parent has no ability to earn income. However, for the many parents who enter the criminal justice system with existing child support orders, their child support accrues in the form of debt. Incarcerated parents exit prison with an average of over $20,000 of child support debt.

Learn more about the state of relationships in the US.

Sources & Footnotes

US Census Bureau

Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2017

Last updated

[1]: The most recent data available from the Census Bureau is from 2017.

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Child Support Statistics

84% of child support providers are men
60% of child supporters provide for one child, 30% support two, and 10% support three or more children
Almost 50% of the people who make child support payments are younger than 40
Men pay a medium of $3,600 annually to support their children, while women pay a medium of $2,400 each year.
The median income of a provider of child support is $42,000
76% of the child support payments are due to court order or child support agreement.
38% of child support providers are responsible for health insurance, medical bills, and other assorted health care costs.
17% of child support agreements make no provision for health care of children.
The most common ways of collecting child support are:

Wage withholding: 33.8%
Direct payment to parent: 31.7%
Direct payment to child support agency: 14. 38%
Direct payment to the court: 17.7%
Other methods: 2.4%

Child Support Payments

Child Support payments are more likely when custody and visitation agreements in place according to Findlaw. Mediation has become the most popular way for parents to agree on shared parenting. Although all CA courts offer low cost mediation, the mediation is limited to parenting plans only. No child support, spousal support or property settlements may be determined through court mediation.

A large majority (85.3 percent) of the 6.9 million custodial parents due child support payments in 2001 in the U.S. had arrangements for joint child custody or visitation privileges with the non-custodial parents, and approximately three-fourths (77.1 percent) of these parents received some support payments.
Of the custodial parents due child support but who did not have joint custody or visitation arrangements, about half (55. 8 percent) received payments. About 63.0 percent of custodial mothers and 38.6 percent of fathers had child support agreed or awarded to them.
Among these parents who were due support in 2001, 73.9 percent received at least some payments directly from the non-custodial parent.
About 58.9 percent of the 7.9 million child support agreements in 2001 had provisions for health insurance for the children.

Fathers with children who do not live with them were asked in the 2002 census if they contribute financially to their children. 76% of Fathers with at least one child under 19 contribute child support for their children; 9% of Fathers contribute "once in a while" and 15% do not contribute at all.

The Fathers were asked to provide the amount of child support they have been paying in the last twelve months. The median amount is $4250 per year or $354 per month. Almost 18% of Fathers pay more than $9000 per year or $750 per month. 24% of Fathers say they contribute between $5000 and $9000 per year; 36% of fathers said they contribute $3000 or less and 23% say they contribute between $3000 and $5000 per year.

These numbers are national averages in the U.S.

Source: Series 23, No. 26, Table 77 & 78

Alimony lawyer in New York. Alimony for the maintenance of a child

Today, in all states, the procedure for assigning amounts for the maintenance of a child (alimony) is established by law.

How child support is determined

To avoid prejudice and to protect the equal rights of children, the federal government has established child support guidelines that are mandatory for all states. States, in turn, have the right to make more specific recommendations to established principles.

Income

One of the main guidelines for determining child support is income. This takes into account the gross or net income of both parents, and from the percentage is calculated the amount that each parent must pay as alimony.

Deductions

If one of the parents has already been ordered by the court to pay child support and he pays it regularly, then the amount of this child support is subject to deduction when determining his income for the purposes of determining the amount of new support. However, this rule is valid only for the establishment of new alimony, it is not possible to revise the previous established amount of alimony taking into account new alimony.

Childcare expense

The government also determines the amount that parents must spend on childcare. Usually, this amount is calculated taking into account the mandatory taxes that the parent pays. However, some states provide benefits to parents who pay child support and exempt them from taxes on their income.

Health care expense

Among other things, when determining the amount of child support, great attention is paid to the coverage of the child's health insurance. When support is approved, the amount needed to pay off health insurance is included in the main amount of support. Some states also account for emergency medical expenses as well as incidental medical expenses.

Other expenses

The amount of support can also be increased taking into account other expenses. Other expenses usually include specific expenses that are specific to each individual case. Such expenses include the cost of educating children with disabilities or gifted children. Usually such expenses are divided between the parents proportionally and are included in the amount of alimony.

Shared Custody and Visitation

The judge tries to take into account the time the child spends with either parent when setting the amount of child support. The more a parent is allowed to spend with a child, the more child support is assigned. For example, if a child is assigned joint custody, the amount of child support will be significantly less than if the child has a single guardian for short visits.

The use of guidelines in determining the amount of alimony is not only aimed at protecting the rights and interests of children, but also calculated on the fair distribution of material responsibilities between parents. However, there are situations in which the amount of child support established is greater than or less than the amount determined by the guidelines. In this case, litigation is required to establish mitigating factors.

Our law office will provide you with quality legal assistance in all matters of family law.

Please note the important information in the Family Law section

American Divorce. How is the issue of alimony resolved in the States? | Psychology of life | Health

And how is the issue of alimony resolved in the States?

Good reason

For a few more years in New York State, for example, in order to get a divorce, you had to admit one party was guilty and the other was offended. One of the spouses had to confess to treason, drunkenness, beatings...

When nothing like this actually happened, someone alone had to take responsibility for the crime against the family. And only in 2010 there was adopted a law on the possibility of divorce "without anyone's fault", although the rest of America had already done this a long time ago.

Divorce, where both parties are not to blame, relies on two main reasons: people “have not lived together for a hundred years” (in fact, they have not lived for at least a year and a half) or they are separated by irreconcilable contradictions.

The first progressive "no fault" divorce law was passed in Oklahoma in 1953 years later, and 17 years later, the state of California performed the same feat. Then the governor there was Ronald Reagan - the future president of America. It is no coincidence that it was he who had a hand in the liberalization of family law. Reagan was the only one of all 44 US presidents who had a divorce in his biography, which did not prevent him from making his second wife, Nancy , the first lady of the country.

Emancipation, however!

I am not a feminist, so I am not horrified when a woman receives alimony from her ex-husband after a divorce. But the way men fight for their wives' money is amazing. The client of a lawyer friend of mine, an engineer by profession, pays her husband three thousand dollars a month, literally half of what she earns.

They haven't made any children, and the engineer doesn't understand why she has to feed someone else's grown-up child - her ex, who doesn't work and is just going to study design or business, which he hasn't decided yet. But recently the engineer got lucky: she unearthed a terrible secret. It turns out that a 22-year-old girl, an aspiring fashion designer, has been living in the house of her ex-husband for four months now.

This became the reason for a new trial: the ex-wife was spotted and, turning to the judge, said that she did not have the strength to feed two creative people. The husband justified himself that the designer girl was like a daughter to him, but the judge did not heed this argument and the amount of alimony decreased, however, insignificantly. The ex-husband was also recommended to look for a job, bring documentary evidence of mailing his resume to employers and attending an interview. The man left the courtroom gloomy and "robbed".

Still, on an all-American scale, female alimony is still not common, in 2010 only 3% of all divorcing husbands received payments from ex-wives, although, according to experts, the number of such men is growing rapidly.

Is money more valuable than love?

In most states, child support is paid until the ex-spouse marries or remarries. But in the state of Florida, for example, the terms of payments were limited not so long ago. The judge sets a time limit, let's say 2 years, since he believes that this time is enough for a woman who did not work in marriage after a divorce to learn how to earn her own bread. The amount of alimony depends on how the marriage was - long or not very long. If you have been married for less than 11 years, this is not considered a long time in Florida. Supporters of a limited period of alimony payments are sure that these payments are “harmful” and often slow down the start of a new life: women do not remarry and even maintain their lonely state in every possible way, because money is more precious than love. And the financially more prosperous half, in order not to pay alimony, goes to deceit and sometimes to the complete collapse of their career.

In general, it is enough to go to the site of divorced and divorced people once and read their stories to understand that all these people are unhappy.

In seven US states, a husband or wife can sue the lover or mistress who caused the divorce. And the "razluchnikov" will answer according to the law for invading foreign territory.

Men also cry

One pensioner, 67 years old, left the state of Massachusetts, according to the laws of which he had to pay his ex-wife, with whom he had been married for 34 years, large alimony. In 2009he lost his job as a pharmacist, and never found a new one, owed his wife 20,000, for which he served four days in prison, until friends and relatives made up the shortfall for him.

After that, the ex-husband went to live on an Indian reservation, since he was a quarter of the Cherokee. Now he is sitting there and saying: I am already old, release me from lifelong alimony to my ex-wife, but we are in a completely equal position.

But in Massachusetts there is no such law that the old ex-husband can not pay alimony to the ex-wife. And in some others, laws have already been passed, according to which the payment of alimony is suspended after reaching retirement age.

In the meantime, the 67-year-old American sits on the reservation, receives a pension of $ 800 a month, most of which goes to pay alimony to his ex-wife.

Who is in profit

The longer a divorce lasts, the more expensive it is. Half of the spouses during this time unite in a common feeling of dislike for lawyers. Lawyers here are called bees who collect honey from divorce flowers, and the longer they collect, the better for them.

The average time for which you will be divorced is from one to three years. The lawyer takes for such cases as for heart surgery, if the case is complex, and if it is simple, then as for appendicitis, which is also a lot.