United Future

Child 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.

Whilst 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.

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.

Currently if a ncp has his children for a weekend, dropped off on Saturday morning collected on Sunday night that is only 1 night yet the father has had them for 2 days.
Some mothers actually cap the number of nights that the kids can be with dad as too many and their child support payments decrease so they actually deny the kids time with the father for this reason.
Currently the formula used to determine the fathers liability is biased and skewed. For example a cp can earn a million dollars and have her own business but the child support liability is based on the fathers income only! There is no consideration for the income of the cp.
Our current laws were brought in 20 years ago when the family dynamics were different to what they are today. Mum stayed at home and bought the kids up while dad worked. Australia followed our lead but a few years ago changed their system to allow for the income, assets and earning capacity of the cp to be taken into consideration. A far fairer system than the current biased and skewed one that we have now.
If the father is the only person paying child support and then he has the kids 50% of the time that means that he is paying double. What is the mother paying? Just for the 50% of the time that they are with her? She should to be fair pay child support to the father for the 50% of the time that he has them, but she won't or doesn't!
The current scheme actually discourages fathers from having their children and it also discourages them from paying as they are well and truely ripped off.
Try and get some fairness from the Child Support dept and that is an impossibilty as they are pro custodial parent. As a female I am appalled at how the current system penalises our NZ dads.

Hmm it's now December 2011 and still the child support is determined by legislation brought in in 1991. When oh when is it going to change to reflect the circumstances of families and the parents in particular 21 years later??