Government’s concern for children and desire to protect them from poverty, led them to establish child support as rate of poverty among single family with children increased. Federal child supports were established in 1975 under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act to obtain support from noncustodial parents, so single family could stay off public assistance and away from poverty (Child Support Handbook 2). According to Beld child support is an important source of income to help reduce economic insecurity for single family with children “with approximately half of United States children now expected to spend at least part of their childhood in a single parent home, federal and state child support policies touch families in every demographic …show more content…
To begin with, child supports are applied through the local or state child support agency. An application is to be filed, child support magistrate, district court referee, or district court judge then will ordered child support according Minnesota’s Child Support Laws: An Overview (Aves 5). Single parents with children in need of financial support should establish child support order through their county agency so that their children get the support they deserve from both parents. Once the child support order is filed the state would first establish paternity of the never married non-custodial parent. Establishing paternity of the non-custodial parents may be the best interest for the child and the father because knowing that the child is really his, the father will be more emotional involve and willing to pay child support. Furthermore, state is doing their best to be fair to both parents and calculated child support based on the combined gross income of both parents. As Aves pointed out “the parents’ monthly incomes after adjustments are added together to determine the combined parental income for child support” (Aves 7). As Jane C. Venohr from Child Support Guidelines and Guidelines Reviews: State Differences and Common Issues pointed out “Under the Income Shares Model, each party is responsible for his or her prorated share of child-rearing expenditures. The obligated parent's share becomes the base of the support award calculation. The Income Shares Model requires information about each party's income in the calculation of the support award” (Venohr 1). State child support service work with both parents regardless of their circumstance and make child supports as reasonable as possible, by
The current system has not been good for children. In 1965 there were 3.3 million children on AFDC; by 1992, that had risen to over 9 million children despite the fact that the total number of children in this country has declined. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services estimated if we do nothing, 12 million will be on AFDC in 10 years. Instead of working up, we find more and more children being trapped in a system and into dependency on welfare. 90 percent of the children on AFDC live without one of their parents. Only a fraction of welfare families are engaged in work. There are always the sad accounts of how, again and again, women would get off of welfare, they would be doing well on their own, but their child-care would fall apart just as they were getting back on their feet. The new bill provides $3.5 billion more than current for that needed child care.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) no longer exists. A new era has arrived and the nation has moved in a completely different direction. In 1996, new legislation, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, was passed. Under this new Act, " The state and local governments wide –ranging autonomy, discretion and responsibility for serving poor women and children were returned to them. It does this by repealing AFDC, the nation’s welfare employment program (the Job Opportunity and Basic Skills Training Program), and the AFDC emergency assistance program. In its place, Congress and the president have authorized an unprecedented amount of block grant funding to states through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)".
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 fundamentally changed the cash welfare system in the United States. It cancelled Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) plan, replacing it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). It abolished the entitlement status of welfare, provided states with strong incentives to impose time limits, and tied funding levels to the states’ success in moving welfare recipients into work. It is well known that caseloads plummeted during the 1990s and that employment rates of single mothers--the primary recipients of welfare in the United States—rose almost as fast (Shipler).
It is well known that the Social Security Act of 1935 created a federally financed and federally administered retirement insurance program for people who had worked in certain sectors of the economy and had paid payroll taxes on their wages. What is less known is that the Act also created a federally financed but state-administered program called Aid to Dependent Children (“ADC,” later to become Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or “AFDC”)? As Sheldon H. Danziger and Jeffrey S. Lehman stated in “Welfare”, “When Americans speak of “welfare” or “relief” they are usually alluding to ADC and its successor programs. From the outset, the design and implementation of ADC highlighted the central conflicts of welfare policy. Issues of race, gender, work, and parenting style were, then as now, matters of great social tension”(Danziger). From 1935 to 1960 the only changes to the welfare structure was the inclusion of widows and disabled people into the social security system.
Child support is used when a family is under the poverty line and have children that need to be supported to attend school, be fed, clothed and sheltered. Other types of welfare include ones that benefit the disabled, wether it be intellectually or physically.
...e best interest of their children. It’s not the amount of child support that is being paid that is important while you are doing the best you can for your children and supporting them the best way you can. Enforcing child support and having greater punishments are not just to make the nonpaying parents lives more difficult but to ensure a better life for their children.
The issues surrounding welfare and welfare reform are controversial, political, and difficult to resolve. The debate continues today as to who deserves benefits and who does not. In 1933, President Roosevelt created Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) as part of the New Deal. This early form of welfare was available to those who could demonstrate a need and the ability to maintain minimal assets of their own. It specifically targeted aid to single women with children. It was a controversial and highly debated subject. Even now, many years later, Congress continues to debate and reform welfare programs. It still brings with it the same intensity, controversy, and conflicting opinion it did years ago.
Universally, people regard children as the future of the world. As such, people tend to feel highly protective of them, and do everything in their power to ensure the safety of their young. The idea of an entire country turning a blind eye to children’s misery is appalling, but, in his Washington Post article “The Blood-Stained Indian Child Welfare Act,” George Will contends that most people are overlooking a great source of grief for many children and families. For this reason, Will unearths the atrocities surrounding the Indian Child Welfare Act.
The income that people pay for child support has many factors. Depending on what state you may reside in plays a major role in how much the parent may end up paying. Looking at things on a broad spectrum anything is valid when it comes down to determining the amount that a child will receive from the noncustodial parent. According to LawInfo there are three models that states choose to follow in order to calculate the income of each person's child support case; Flat Percentage, Income Shares, and Melson Formula. The similarity between these three models is how much the parents receive economically and the child’s necessities. With these three models plugged into the child support system we will get a better understanding of how the parents and children benefit from each model. Once the economic issues are settled among the parents there may not be a stable environment just yet until custody rights are given and agreed on. The following models will give a brie...
Downs-Whitelaw, S., Moore, E., &McFadden, E. J. (2009). Child welfare and family services: Policies and practice, USA: Parson Education Inc.
However, families that are physically capable of working and taking care of their own should have time limits to live in these public housings. The local governments should implement time limits and job training programs to those receiving these kinds of benefits. Many people believe that welfare promoted child barring out of wedlock because these single mothers had the assurance that the welfare program would assist them. It also promoted the dissolution of families as a larger incentive. According to William Epstein in his book “Welfare in America” “when the number of female headed households increases, so apparently does dependency on welfare” (Epstein 125) Childbearing has long term consequences for the mothers, children, and the welfare system. Consequently welfare programs supports child support enforcement programs that lessen the dependence on AFDC, and make the absent parent responsible for child support and health insurance for the child. This enforced programs are the way to making the program better and making the absent parents responsible for their children. The welfare system gives aid to many single mothers and their children. Why do these mothers have a hard time getting into the working field? Many may
Men have changed as well; men didn’t used to think that children were their responsibility. If they didn’t want to give their child financial support, they would simply leave and they didn’t spend time with their children, if they didn’t want to. However, things have changed as now, men are required by the law to support their children financially even if they get a divorce. Moreover,
Downs, S., Moore, E., McFadden, E., & Costin, L. (2004). Child welfare and family services: Policies and practice. (7th. Ed., pp. 319-363) Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
According to the 2012 Census Bureau report, in 2012 the average household family income was around $51,017 dollars a year. The income is nearly split in half for the income of a single parent. Single parents are often financially unstable, decreasing opportunity and lifestyle quality for their children. “The single mother lives with the competing priorities of earning money and providing caring services to their children” (Bronnimann). To provide some aid to single parents, the government requires for the noncustodial parent to pay what is known as Child Support. Child support is a payment that the noncustodial parent must pay to make up for the financial costs he or she would need to contribute to the child or children to support their lifestyle. However often times the noncustodial parent does not earn a large enough income to pay a significant amount of child support. In some cases the noncustodial parent may be unemployed and unable to contribute at all. Children coming fr...
A single parent household has been stereotyped as a place where women are the main contributors. They are also women who don 't have or hold a job and rely on the government to provide for themselves and for their kid(s). However, from personal experience it can be the opposite in some states. In fact, "single mothers are more than twice as likely to be unemployed (12 percent) compared with mothers in married-couple families (5 percent); and the majority of employed single mothers—59 percent—are working in retail, service, and administrative jobs that typically provide low wages and few benefits" (Mather,