Divorce is hard on kids. Young children especially, continue to love both parents even during a bitter divorce. Older children suffer but, often suppress their insecurity. Divorce causes instability and uncertainty for children. Unfortunately, parents often put children in the middle of their conflict with the other parent.
I wish we could reduce the number of divorces. It’s an area of the law which is full of anger and emotion. When two people divorce and create two households, there usually is not enough money to maintain the same standard of living for everyone. In my 30 year career as an attorney, I have lost more sleep while representing parents in custody fights, than anything else I’ve done.
With this perspective, I have Chaired the Senate Family Law committee for the past 4 years. ( I am the only Republican to chair a policy committee in the DFL controlled Senate).
In 2003 I introduced a bill to change Minnesota’s child support law and re-codify the entire Marriage dissolution law. Here is a copy of the bill as it passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2003, and a copy of the Summary of the bill prepared by Senate Counsel.
Every 4 years, the Department of Human Services is required to evaluate the State’s child support system. The review committee recommended moving to a system called the “Income Shares” model . Under current law, only the non-custodial parent’s income is considered when calculating child support. This is called the “Percent of Obligor” system. We’ve had this system for more than 20 years. It’s not based on any economic model and was perceived as unfair, especially by fathers who tend to be the non-custodial parent in the majority of cases, and believe that they pay too much for child support.
The courts developed a formula for off-setting child support obligations when parents have joint custody (called the Hortis-Valento formula). This had the effect of encouraging litigation over whether a parent’s time with their children was going to be called “custody” or “visitation”. The label given to the parenting time could mean a big difference in the amount of money one parent paid to the other. Fighting in court over custody and visitation is costly, financially and emotionally, and consumes a lot of the court’s time. Often, the fight isn’t really about time with the children, but rather, the amount of child support that gets paid.
In 2004, a child support reform bill passed the House, and made it to the Senate floor. But, disagreement among family lawyers, judges, legal aid advocates, and father’s rights groups, continued. The bill was never voted on by the Senate during the 2004 session. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Over the interim, I studied child support laws in 12 other states which had adopted the “Income Shares” model. I learned more about the economics of child support than I ever did as a practicing attorney, and probably more than any legislator in Minnesota.
I decided that Oregon had a child support law that would be a good model for Minnesota. In 2005, I re-wrote the bill and started over.
I’ve never worked as hard on a bill. My Legislative Assistants and I took hundreds of calls from moms and dads who were angry with the current system. We met with dozens of legal advocates, judges, law school professors, child support collection workers, and family attorneys in an effort to address various concerns.
Ultimately, the bill passed because my colleagues and others had faith that I was being fair to everyone involved. Here is the bill (SF 630) as it was finally passed into law in May, 2005. The new law will take effect on Jan.1, 2007. An independent consultant reviewed the law in 2005 and told me that Minnesota’s new law was better than Oregon’s. I think it might become a model law for the country.
Here are just a few things the new law does:
1. Reduce some of the acrimony between parents during a divorce by presuming that each parent is entitled to at least 25% of the time with the children after the divorce is final.
There is a parenting time credit (reduction of child support) given to the “non-custodial” parent if they are awarded between 10% and 45% of the time with the children. This creates an incentive to utilize parenting time. Children will be better off when they have a continuing relationship with both parents.
Since the non-custodial parent can have up to 45% of the time with their child, without being entitled to a reduction in child support, an incentive exists for custodial parents (usually moms), to be generous in granting more time with the children to the non-custodial parent. This too, is good for fathers and for children.
2. Child support will no longer depend upon whether a parent’s time with their children is called “custody” or “visitation”. Labels are meaningless, and litigation over labels will stop.
3. Creates a new guideline which will consider the income of both parents when calculating child support. Fathers perceive this as being more fair.
4. Creates a “self support reserve”, which recognizes that one parent cannot pay child support if they cannot even support themselves.
5. Makes the system more “flexible”, by allowing consideration of special family circumstances. The new law states clearly that the goal, when setting child support, is “to prevent either parent or the child from living in poverty.” Judges will be able to consider any reasonable factor to deviate from the general guideline in order to prevent children or parents from suffering.
6. Creates a Web-based child support calculator which will make it easier for anyone to calculate what they owe for child support. This feature is what impressed me most about Oregon’s law.
7. Recognizes the cost of raising subsequent children who are born to either parent when calculating child support. Why should subsequent (and younger) children have to live in poverty?
The passage of this bill is the most significant change in Family Law in the past 20 years. The law had a delayed implementation date (Jan.1,2007) because it’s such a huge task to modify the computer programs at the Department of Human Services and train hundreds of county workers and judges to implement the new law. I am excited, and hopeful, that the new law will improve people’s lives.