Virginia Child Support Panel to Suggest Increase; Special Interest Influence Apparent

October 9, 2002

The Virginia State Child Support Guideline Review Panel held its last meeting on Tuesday night. The final act of the panel was to vote in favor of arbitrary increases in the state's child support guideline. The "guideline" is a rigid formula used for calculating awards in all child support cases. State court judges are required by law to presume that the formula provides the correct amount of child support to be awarded. To a large extent, the role of judicial decision-making in each case has been replaced by the en masse political decision on what the guideline amounts will be.

States are required by federal law to review their child support guidelines at least once every four years, and to assure that their use results in an appropriate award in every case. According to federal statute, states can lose funds for failure to meet the requirement. But throughout the thirteen year history of the law, the federal government has never actually required any state to perform a technically valid review. No technical standard of validation exists, leaving the review process to politics and special interests. Recommendations by the panel go to Virginia lawmakers who then consider whether to change the guidelines.

Less than a month ago, it was reported that the panel voted to leave the term "child support" undefined. The panel voted to continue using the existing definition. But the state child support statute does not define the term, nor does it provide any set of principles for deciding what an "appropriate" amount of child support is.

Panel member Murray Steinberg raised the question of a definition one last time and was told that the issue had already been discussed and voted on. Pressing further, he received the boldest admission yet that the panel has been steered by special interests. Pointing out that no definition exists in statute, he asked specifically for the existing definition of the term.

He was handed a lobbying paper from private collection agency representative Robert Williams. Williams provides collection services in the state, and his company keeps around one third of the money that flows through his operation. Increases in the amount of child support ordered increase the amount of profit received by his company. Williams was extremely influential in getting the state's formula set to the arbitrarily high level it is today. It was this collection industry view that the panel is treating as law.

The response came from panel chairman Joseph S. Crane. Crane is Assistant Director of Division of Child Support Enforcement and a representative of the state's executive branch on the panel. The child support enforcement program receives additional funding in proportion to the amount of child support paid. Therefore, an increase in the amount ordered will increase the amount taxpayers provide to the Division of Child Support Enforcement through the federal government.

The response was immediately supported by Bill Brownfield, representing the state bar association, and custodial parent representative Cathy Burch. Unjustifiably high presumptive amounts are an inducement to payers to fight over child support, and generally aggravate existing tensions between parents. The number of appeals filed increased shortly after presumptive formula came into use. The financial advantage to custodial parents is obvious. The scene dramatically illustrated how review panels are stacked with people representing special interests. Serious consideratoin of the needs of children and fairness to those who are ordered to pay never made it to the panel's agenda.

The panel invited Dr. William M. Rodgers III, an assistant professor of economics at The College of William and Mary, to provide an "economic analysis" to aid the panel in its decisions. (No relation to child support economics consultant Mark Rogers, Economic-Indicators.Com). Dr. Rodgers altered the way numeric table values have been calculated. The table is used by combining the separated parents income to look up an amount in the table. That amount is regarded as the basic support obligation, even though it is unrelated to what parents involved in the child support decision spend caring for children.

The table values are said to be based on estimates of the cost of raising children in two parent families. By combining the parents' income and using the lookup table, its designers claim that courts have an estimate of what the parents should be spending on their children if they were living together in an intact household. But the "estimates" also include arbitrarily high amounts of adult spending, especially on housing and transportation. Dr. Rodgers' suggestion was based on an arbitrary increase in the already arbitrarily high portion of intact family housing expenditure included in the estimate; simply by designating a higher percent of intact family spending on housing as "for the children."

In his written report to the panel, Dr. Rodgers asserted that the table values needed to be updated in response to inflation. He then modified the calculation used to determine table values in a way that arbitrarily increased the values. The table is designed to increase child support in relation to parental income, especially that of the paying parent. Child support amounts increase as the payer's income increases. There is no relationship between what it costs the custodial parent to care for the child and the amount determined by the formula.

Robert Williams has made similar suggestions to increase the table due to inflation in several states, including Virginia. That suggestion was rejected by the previous Virginia panel. If table values are regularly increased in relation to inflation, as a rule, they would eventually be higher than the parents' income. And then they would continue to rise.

At the high end of the table, Dr. Rodgers suggested an annual expenditure on one child of $17,136 per year, well exceeding 150 percent of the poverty line that he suggests as the allowed self-support reserve for parents. Keeping in mind that this is tax-free income, he suggested that a child should be provided with an income that is in between the actual mean incomes of single adult men and women in the United States. The level of income would be sufficient for the child to care for his own family independently of his parents.

This would be an extra high increase at the top end of the table. His reason for the suggestion may be difficult for people to digest. His report says that he does not have sufficient data for an analysis of high income families. Therefore, lacking any basis, he decided to suggest a dramatic increase in the existing guideline.

"Adding insult to injury," said Mr. Steinberg, is what the panel decided to do on the question of visitation credit. The basic amount of child support calculated by use of the table does not include any consideration for the possibility that the parent paying child support cares of the children part of the year, during designated visitation periods.

The state's formula for providing credit for visitation is designed to deny credit for visitation. (See Child Support's Wacky Math.) Payers can challenge the rigid enforcement of the formula by claiming hardship when paying support twice; to the custodial parent as well as directly while the children are in his care. (Factor No. 2 in the state's rebuttal criteria list.)

According to Mr. Steinberg, the panel will state that the basic formula assumes 60-90 days visitation per year. There is in fact, no reduction in the basic presumptive calculated amount reflecting any visitation.

"This means that factor No. 2 of the rebuttable factors which allow you to ask for a reduction for money spent on the child during court ordered visitation is effectively eliminated. Secondly, if a noncustodial does not have and exercise from 60 to 90 days of visitation a year, the custodial parent can ask the judge to increase the presumptive amount."

Roger F. Gay