Predictors of Initial Court Agreement and 1‐Year Relitigation in Title IV‐D Contested Paternity Cases

• Date: 01 April 2017
• Author: Brittany N. Rudd,Ani R. Poladian,Brian M. D'Onofrio,Amy G. Applegate,Amy Holtzworth‐Munroe
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12275
• Published date: 01 April 2017

PREDICTORS OF INITIAL COURT AGREEMENT AND 1-YEAR

RELITIGATION IN TITLE IV-D CONTESTED PATERNITY CASES

Ani R. Poladian, Brittany N. Rudd, Amy Holtzworth-Munroe, Amy G. Applegate, and

Brian M. D’Onofrio

We examined potential predictors of initial court agreement and 1-year relitigation in a sample of contested paternity cases

involving unmarried parents coming to court to establish paternity, child support, and other issues. Cases participated in an

RCT of a parent program and of a waiting period between establishment of paternity and court hearing. We controlled for

RCT study factors and used baseline assessment data to predict likelihood of reaching full agreement in the initial court hearing

and relitigation in the following year. Findings suggest that cases in which parents get along better outside of court are more

likely to reach agreement and less likely to return to court. Additionally, particular parent demographics predict lower likeli-

hood of reaching initial agreement (e.g., parents are non-White, father earns below $10,000 yearly), more relitigation (e.g.,

parents are non-White, mother earns above $10,000 yearly, father has children with others), and less relitigation (e.g., father

earns above $10,000 yearly). Child demographics and most parent relationship characteristics did not predict outcomes. We

discuss findings and offer suggestions for court interventions.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

To gain insight into potential predictors of court outcomes of an understudied, though growing and likely high- risk,

subgroup of American families

To begin to identify individual- and case-level predictors that may allow us to better understand which families are

best served and which tend to struggle

As this study was the first to consider predictors of court outcomes in a Title IV-D contested paternity sample, all find-

ings require replication before family courts and legal professionals can use them to make court intervention decisions

Keywords: Contested Paternity; Family Court Outcomes; Initial Agreement; Interparental Conflict; Predictors;

Relitigation; Title IV-D; and Unmarried Parents.

Over 40% of children in the United States are born to unmarried parents (Martin, Hamilton, Oster-

man, Curtin, & Matthews, 2015). Unmarried parental relationships are more likely to result in paren-

tal separation than those of married parents (Osborne & McLanahan, 2007; Carlson, McLanahan, &

England, 2004; Osborne, Manning, & Smock, 2007). And, compared to children with continually

married or cohabiting parents, children of separated parents more often experience a variety of diffi-

culties, including psychological, behavioral, and academic problems, as well as financial insecurity

(Amato, 2010; Cooper, Osborne, Beck, & McLanahan, 2011).

However, co-parenting quality and interparental communication among separating parents may

protect against negative child outcomes, as better interparental relationship quality predicts better

parenting in both parents (Beck, Cooper, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010) and greater nonresi-

dential father involvement (Carlson, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008), which is associated with

greater father–child engagement and better child adjustment (Cabrera, Fagan, & Farrie, 2008). Con-

versely, poor co-parenting quality, often characterized by high interparental conflict, can result in

long-term negative consequences for parents and their children. Indeed, court-related consequences

of prolonged interparental conflict include increased litigation and failure to pay child support, both

of which protract involvement with the family court system and cost families and courts time and

resources, potentially negatively impacting children (Kelly & Emery, 2003; Seltzer, McLanahan, &

Hanson, 1998).

Correspondence: apoladia@indiana.edu

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 55 No. 2, April 2017 243–259

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C2017 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

Parental relationship dissolution is a costly and time-consuming process for families and courts

(Scafidi, 2008), and unmarried parents, who, on average, experience more economic distress than

married parents (Kennedy & Finch, 2012), to utilize the court system to resolve child-related disputes

more often than divorcing parents (Insabella, Williams, & Pruett, 2003). One subgroup of unmarried

parents at particularly high risk for negative outcomes is unmarried parents on government assistance

attempting to solve issues in a Title IV-D court. Title IV-D of the Social Security Act mandates the

establishment of paternity so that child support payments can be made by the nonresidential parent,

who is usually the father (see P.L. 93-647, 42 U.S.C. § 651 et seq.). Title IV-D courts must establish

child support, but may sometimes also address related child issues, such as legal custody, physical

custody, parenting time, child support arrearage (i.e., child support payments retroactively ordered),

tax exemption, and the child’s last name.

To our knowledge, only two published empirical studies have focused on unmarried parents in a

Title IV-D court. In a nonrandomized study, Schraufnagel and Li (2010) tested family mediation of

child support orders to understand whether family mediation or traditional litigation is associated

with better parent satisfaction and compliance with child support decisions. They found that family

mediation resulted in greater parent satisfaction than involvement in the traditional court process, but

child support compliance did not significantly differ between the two dispute resolution processes.

The second study was the one from which data for the current project originates (Rudd, Holtzworth-

Munroe, Reyome, Applegate, & D’Onofrio, 2015). It was a randomized controlled trial (RCT) evalu-

ating the impacts of an online parent program and of a waiting period between establishment of

paternity and the court hearing.

Rudd et al. (2015) conducted an RCT of an online parent program (ProudToParent, which was

specifically designed for separating unmarried parents to increase motivation related to child needs

prior to their child support hearing; Asher & Asher, 2012) and of a 2–3-week waiting period

between establishment of paternity and initial court hearing. The RCT was conducted at the Mari-

on County (Indianapolis) Title IV-D Court and focused on cases in which paternity was contested

by a party and then established with court-ordered genetic testing. These cases may constitute an

even higher-risk subgroup within the already high-risk Title IV-D subgroup of unmarried parents,

given the contested nature of the child’s paternity. Counter to study hypotheses, Rudd et al. (2015)

found that the combination of the online parent program and a waiting period decreased the likeli-

hood that parents would reach a full agreement (i.e., agreement on seven possible issues: child sup-

port, legal custody, physical custody, parenting time, arrearage, tax exemption, and child’s last

name).

1

In court-outcome research, including Rudd et al. (2015), one typical way of measuring success is

agreement or resolution rate, which may be especially important to stakeholders interested in maxi-

mizing court efficiency. However, narrowly defining success as reaching initial agreement may be

problematic, as it ignores, among other things, the degree of agreement adherence (Emery, Sbarra, &

Grover, 2005). That is, initial agreement may not be an ideal outcome if it is followed by additional

court activity, such as increased relitigation. Relitigation is thought to be an important indicator of

prolonged interparental conflict, as a protracted, adversarial court process may produce or maintain

hostile conflict between parties (Milne, Folberg, & Salem, 2004), and continued interparental conflict

postseparation is believed to be a key predictor of poor outcomes for children (Amato, 2001;

Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992). Thus, in addition to initial agreement, it is also important to measure

relitigation following a court hearing.

Although separating, unmarried parents constitute a major segment of families utilizing the family

court system, little is known regarding predictors of court outcomes in the immediate (e.g., initial

agreement) and long-term (e.g., 1-year relitigation) for such families attempting to solve issues in a

Title IV-D court. The present study was designed to begin filling in that gap in our knowledge.

Although there is no directly parallel empirical literature from which we could develop firm hypothe-

ses for this study, we believe generalization from research on other family law interventions—pri-

marily cross-sectional research identifying correlates of initial agreement among separating parents

who participated in family mediation—may suggest potential directions. The current study focuses

244 FAMILY COURT REVIEW