Understanding Child Support
One of the continuing tragedies of divorce is the failure of many children of divorce to receive adequate child support. In over 50 percent of all child support situations, the required payments are either paid late or not at all.
Even in those cases where the payments are made on time, many of the child support awards are totally inadequate to provide satisfactory care for the children. Dramatic changes in the laws relating to child support have been enacted in the last decade in an effort to correct this situation.
Mandated by recent federal legislation, comprehensive new guidelines for determining the level of support required have recently been adopted in individual states. These de-tailed rules provide specific procedures and criteria for assuring that each child receives adequate support from both parents upon divorce.
In an effort to institute a national system to enforce the collection of delinquent child support payments, the Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Act has been ad¬opted by all states. Numerous strict laws have also been passed in many states to aid in the collection of overdue support payments. In addition, the federal government has enacted other tough national legislation in an attempt to solve this problem.
© Nova Publishing Company, 2005