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Multiple Families, Multiple Goals, Multiple Failures: The Need For “Limited Equalization” As A Theory Of Child Support, Adrienne Jennings Lockie

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Current child support laws are based on flawed assumptions about families that fail to reflect family complexity and the realities of parenting. Further, there has been little reevaluation of the stated goals of child support law since they were first implemented thirty years ago. The stated goals — fiscal savings, children’s economic well-being, and parental involvement — have not been achieved and are increasingly unlikely to be achieved because they ignore the way that children in multiple families — families in which at least one parent has had another child with a different partner —compete for the limited resources of …