Support Calculation Revisited
| Publication year | 1983 |
| Pages | 1647 |
1983, October, Pg. 1647. Support Calculation Revisited
In the landmark case of Smith v. Smith, the Supreme Court of Oregon noted:
Various alternatives have been proposed by the commentators or adopted by the courts in calculating child support. There are three basic approaches to determining child support: a case-by-case method; a schedule or percentage method based upon the noncustodial parent's income; and what we term a formula method. Under all three methods, the ultimate decision as to the amount of child support is tempered by the court's discretion, either based on general equitable principles or on a list of specific equitable principles to be applied.(fn1)
Discussing the case-by-case approach, Chief Justice Denecke observed, "When there is no uniformity of court decisions more hearings are required to determine temporary support, settlements are more difficult, and the volume of appealed cases multiplies."(fn2)
Tables meet the need for uniformity but fail miserably in other respects.(fn3) Tables are inherently two-dimensional, taking into account only (1) the number of children and (2) the income of the noncustodial parent. Tables ignore such fundamentals as the costs of supporting the particular children in question, the income of the custodian and the amount of time the children spend with each parent. Moreover, tables are of questionable value where both parents are employed or employable and can be utterly useless in cases of joint or split custody.
Many tables also suffer from pure arbitrariness. The child support guidelines for Santa Clara County, California, for example, are typical of the "percentage" oversimplification. Those guidelines provide 18 percent of the noncustodian's income for the first child, 10 percent for the second child, 7 percent for the third child, and 5 percent per child thereafter. Where does the anonymous author derive his 18 percent base figure? Why not 19 percent or 17.5 percent? Is this simply something that some unnamed person feels is "just"?
The Oregon decision in Smith observes that tables fail to reflect the view that each parent must contribute to the financial support of the child to the best of his or her ability; yet, "the needs of the children in reality do not increase in proportion to the increases in the parent's ability to pay."(fn4) If the child of a rich man eats three times the quantity of food consumed by the child of a poor man, the rich child quickly will become obese. A well-balanced meal is a well-balanced meal, and the cost of broccoli actually is lower in the suburbs than in the ghetto. Short of clothing at Gucci's, Halston's or Brooks Brothers, the cost of clothing does not vary appreciably with income. Most children today wear blue jeans, and blue jeans are blue jeans.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals in the case of Hamilton v. Hamilton (fn5) called for a formula approach to setting child support. The Oregon Court in the case of Smith actually adopted a formula and mandated its use by the trial courts of that state.(fn6) In states where no formula has been adopted or mandated, each side of a case presumably is free to argue and advocate a particular calculation. The trial judge likewise is free to use a case-by-case approach or a formula if he wishes. Thus, formulas are useful as an advocacy tool in states that have not adopted any particular formula.
A true formula is founded hopefully on logic and not guesswork; it does not need to be revised with every shift in the economic winds.(fn7) The formula should work when the mother is employed, when the father has custody, when the parents have joint or split custody, and in just about every fact situation. Although the amount of support for any particular child obviously will have to be revised from time to time, the formula itself should not. It should work equally well during inflation, depression, war and peace.
The philosophical basis for the formula presented below is that with...
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