My Presentation to the National Child Support Engagement Association (NCSEA)
By Don Hubin, Ph.D., Chair, National Board of Directors
Child support laws and policies play a significant role in how separated parents raise their children. The child support system was built on a sole custody model. The enabling federal legislation referred to those who were ordered to pay child support as “absent parents”! While there has been undeniable progress in reforming child support guidelines to better serve the needs of modern families and, especially children, those guidelines and the policies of child support agencies often create barriers, sometimes insurmountable barriers, to equal shared parenting.
Because of the crucial role that child support laws and policies play, NPO has become increasingly involved in the effort to reform these laws and policies, publishing the 2022 NPO Child Support and Shared Parenting Report Card, documenting the arbitrary and excessive nature of state child support guidelines, and advocating for specific changes in child support laws. NPO has also worked closely with reform advocates and legislators in several states to improve their child support guidelines. And, for several years, NPO has sent representatives to the National Child Support Engagement Association (NCSEA) annual Policy Forum. Until this year, the NPO representatives at the Policy Forums were in the roles of observers and informal advocates for change.
This year’s NCSEA Policy Forum was different. The organizing committee invited me to represent NPO in a session devoted to “Rethinking Child Support Guidelines: Balancing Family Needs and Modern Parenting Practices”. The focus of my presentation was on the information unearthed in NPO’s 2022 Report Card about the failure of many states to enact well-designed parenting time adjustments (aka, ‘residential credits’) to facilitate shared parenting. I appealed to the child support professionals in attendance to work to design parenting time adjustments that recognized both parents’ direct expenses on the children and fairly divided the combined child support obligations of the two parents between the children’s two homes when the children had two homes.
Frankly, I didn’t know what sort of reception I would get. The planning sessions with my co-presenters and several NCSEA leaders were reassuring. They were very supportive of the message I was planning to present.
My presentation went well, I think. And I believe that my main messages were underscored by my co-panelist, Tracy Rumans, current Chair of the Colorado Child Support Commission, who highlighted the need for a well-designed parenting time adjustment and called out NPO for its work in assisting the Colorado Commission in arriving at its recommendations for change.
After my presentation, one of the leaders of NCSEA, a person who had in conversations during previous Forums seemed relatively uninterested in NPO’s concerns about the current child support system, made a beeline to thank me profusely for what I’d presented. And, as the day’s session wound up, NCSEA President Charles Smith also expressed appreciation and said, “and more to come,” hinting that this might not be NPO”s last invitation to present at an NCSEA Policy Forum.
The child support program in America is a very large, decentralized bureaucracy. It will take time and sustained effort to reform the state child support guidelines so that they really benefit children by supporting shared parenting and treating all parents fairly. No one should be looking through rose-colored glasses now. But there are signs that leaders in the child support system have heard NPO’s concerns and are open to seriously considering the needed reforms. This is not a time to coast but, instead, to redouble our efforts to bring about significant improvement to the child support system.
