"Child Support" - Its Origin & Evolution

Originally, the idea of child support, 100+ years ago, centered upon reimbursement for public assistance.  This, at first glance, appears to be a more reasonable and understandable rationale. 

For our purposes, we are focused on the last great consolidation of legislative interest and its shift from the 80s. 

Congress compelled the use of presumptive child-support guidelines in all states, but never mandated a specific formula.

The “income shares” model emerged from federal advisory work in the mid-1980s and
subsequent state-level legislative debates.

To this day, Title IV does not require a particular method -- the federal framework requires state formulas to be "rebuttably presumptive" and to be built on specific, descriptive, and numeric criteria, with deviations allowed only via written findings.

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Sidebar...

RBC was designed to satisfy federal parameters and has been vetted accordingly.

Numeric: RBC = (Adjusted Per-Diem Rate) × N × |PT_A − PT_B| is a clear, numeric formula.

Descriptive: RBC defines Parenting Day, Monthly Parenting Days, Number of Children, and the CPI indexing.

Specific: Day-based counting rules remove ambiguity.

Deviation record: Sections 5–6 (extraordinary expenses, safety) become the permitted factors a judge may cite when rebutting the presumption.

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Main Sources

1. Federal Mandates for Guidelines
• 1984: Congress required states to establish child-support guidelines (not binding yet).
• 1988: The Family Support Act required guidelines to be presumptively applied and
periodically reviewed; states had to create review/adjustment processes.
• The Senate Finance Committee’s report described the intent: binding guidelines with
“good cause” deviations, periodic economic updates, and fairness safeguards.
• HHS regulations at 45 C.F.R. §302.56 set minimum federal requirements but did not
prescribe a formula.

2. HHS Advisory Panel and Prototype Model
• In 1984–87, the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) convened a national Advisory Panel on Child Support Guidelines.
• The 1987 final report recommended the “income shares” approach, based on consumer
expenditure data (Espenshade), with a self-support reserve for obligors.
• Principle: children should receive the same proportion of parental income as if the parents lived together.
• The model became the template for many states’ schedules.

3. State Committee Deliberations
• States debated multiple models: Income Shares, Wisconsin Percentage-of-Obligor, and the Melson Formula.
• Example: Maine Judiciary Committee (1988) reviewed options, consulted experts, and
adopted income shares with gross income as the base.
• Considerations included: fairness between parents, alignment with economic studies,
treatment of health and childcare costs, and self-support reserves.

4. Key Themes Across Committees
• Economic Basis: Consumer expenditure data to determine child costs.
• Allocation: Pro-rata division by each parent’s share of combined income.
• Ability-to-Pay: Self-support reserve to protect low-income obligors.
• Presumptive but Rebuttable: Default amounts can be changed with documented reasons.
• Periodic Review: Quadrennial economic recalibration required by federal law.

5. Common Debates and Points of Contention
• Model choice (simplicity vs. inclusiveness of custodial income).
• Gross vs. net income as a basis.
• Treatment of imputed income for underemployment.
• Parenting-time adjustments for shared custody.
• Handling of health care, childcare, and other add-ons.
• Preventing uncollectible arrears for low-income obligors.

6. Key Source References
• U.S. Senate Finance Committee Report (1988) on the Family Support Act.
• 45 C.F.R. §302.56 and HHS rulemaking preambles.
• Maine Judiciary Committee Report (1988) comparing guideline models.
• State quadrennial review reports (CA, CO, SC, MI, NC, etc.) citing the 1987 Advisory Panel
prototype.