As some of you may know I have been doing a lot of research into the Support Tables. And to no one's surprise... They Suck. They don't do what they are supposed to, and they can impoverishment a support payer. They don't respect the actual costs of the children, the actual money available to the the family, the minimum needs of the separated Family or who is absorbing the costs.
Not that it looks like any of us can do anything about it right now, but I think I've found a better way. (I attached a spread sheet to play around with at the bottom if you don't want to read my rational).
Here are the premises and rational I used to approach the problem of support for our children:
1) Parents should not have to pay support while under the poverty line.
2) The basic needs of the children must be met.
4) Equivalence scale must be appropriate
5) Apportioning Support should be based on Access and Income
6) New children in each household must be supported as well.
You can still get some extreme support amounts, but that is usually where the family income is quite low and all available funds above the LICO are being used for the children and could theoretically bring a paying parent down to (but never below) the Poverty line.
Let me know what you think. The Sheet is protected, but if you want to see my Excel stupidity the password to unprotect it is 0000.
Not that it looks like any of us can do anything about it right now, but I think I've found a better way. (I attached a spread sheet to play around with at the bottom if you don't want to read my rational).
Here are the premises and rational I used to approach the problem of support for our children:
1) Parents should not have to pay support while under the poverty line.
If they can't support themselves it is pretty damn hard to support a child. While it is each parents responsibility to get the support for themselves (ie no extra support paid to get a parent up to or above the poverty line) they will not be responsible for the costs of the child while they are "poor".
In Canada we have an index called the "Lower Income Cut Off" or LICO this is the amount of money that it is assumed to be needed to Support yourself with your basic needs. I used numbers published from StatsCan for 2010 in my support calculator.
Only income above the LICO is considered for the support of the children.
In Canada we have an index called the "Lower Income Cut Off" or LICO this is the amount of money that it is assumed to be needed to Support yourself with your basic needs. I used numbers published from StatsCan for 2010 in my support calculator.
Only income above the LICO is considered for the support of the children.
2) The basic needs of the children must be met.
All available funds from the parents will be directed to the children through support until the children's basic needs have been met.
The LICO numbers are given for different Family sizes (1 thorugh "7 or more").
The Basic needs of the children are assumed to be the LICO for a single parent home - The LICO for an individual.
3) Costs of the children should be based on actual available funds.The LICO numbers are given for different Family sizes (1 thorugh "7 or more").
The Basic needs of the children are assumed to be the LICO for a single parent home - The LICO for an individual.
Only Income above the LICO from both parents will be considered when calculating support.
When estimating the Costs of the Children I used the following Formula:
This gave me a percentage of the available funds that are attributed to be costs of the children based on the number of children in a family
When estimating the Costs of the Children I used the following Formula:
Code:
(Equivalence Scale of the Single Parent Family) - (Equivalence scale of an individual) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (Equivalence Scale of the Single Parent Family) + (Equivalence scale of an individual)
4) Equivalence scale must be appropriate
The ratios between the published LICO numbers give a good indication of how these costs should be estimated, and that is what I used.
5) Apportioning Support should be based on Access and Income
I used what I saw in the Australian support system which was Access % - Income %. A negative number means you have to pay support, a positive number means you receive support. Then you multiply the new percentage by the Amount that is being directed to the children, and this gives you the yearly support amount.
6) New children in each household must be supported as well.
The adjustment has a very minimal affect on the Support amounts, but there is a LICO amount calculated for each additional child in the new household and the Costs percentage is adjusted slightly to account for the other children that need to be supported.
You can still get some extreme support amounts, but that is usually where the family income is quite low and all available funds above the LICO are being used for the children and could theoretically bring a paying parent down to (but never below) the Poverty line.
Let me know what you think. The Sheet is protected, but if you want to see my Excel stupidity the password to unprotect it is 0000.
Comment