Have Your Say – Polls
We understand clearly that the only reason for our existence is to represent the voice of the people in our parliament. We believe that any party that is not constantly in touch with the views of the people is simply not doing its job. In this space you can read what others think on key issues, and you can let us know your views.Do you support the changes to Child Support law?
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I must say I have to agree with the poster "ET" Many ex partners not only begrudge having to pay Child Support to the Primary Care Giver but they also will now get to pay less just by having them for 102 out of 364 nights of a year. Twenty Eight percent is way too low. You would expect that they may step up and help pay when their child support goes down for school college uniforms and the like but this is not the case. It puts the primary care giver in a worse situation than they were in to start with. What a riddiculous idea, surely shared care is shared care, 40-50% of nights. 28/72 is not shared care! Ludicrist.
Posted by Sandra Poneski 1.18PM, 25 Sep 2011Whilst every Child Support Case in a perfect world would be based on their own merits I write to ask how 28% of nights can possibly be considered as "shared" care of children. Out of 365 nights of the year we are saying that (sorry my math is a little sketcy) that approximately 106-110 nights is "shared care" when one parent clearly looks after the children, meeting their needs from a feeding, clothing, housing standpoint for the other 250 + nights? How can this possibly be even remotely "shared care". The primary caregiver on the lesser payment that they will receive will STILL be expected (as most primary caregivers are) to pay for all clothing, school materials, food, housing etc requirements on a lesser amount?
Furthermore, some mothers work more than one job to actually meet their requirements of ensuring both parents are paying equal amounts into the upbringing of the children of the house. Not only in doing this but they fit their "hours" around school for younger children meaning that they can only work limited amount of hours in lesser paid jobs, in order to still maintain the children having a caregiver with them before and after school and not having to go into "care" when surely the best ideal situation for the children is to have their parent fulfill this role of "after school and before school" care.
I personally believe at this rate you will find more mothers applying for the DPB as they will be in effect receiving more than going out and working with receiving child support.
Posted by ET 6.20PM, 5 Sep 2011Child support is a difficult and often very emotional issue - for child support to be necessary it means the parents of the children have not been able to work out between themselves how to support their children.
The current system of child support can be quite unfair on parents, and that inevitably impacts on their children.
This is a hard one to get right. It will be impossible to make all parents happy - failed relationships are often a time of deep unhappiness anyway - but it's good to see it being addressed. I'm sure it will be a significant improvement.
Posted by Pete George 7.09AM, 24 Aug 2011