New Zealand is one of the countries on the right track with potential father-friendly child support reforms that would eliminate the current model of using the non-custodial parent, traditionally the father, as a “cash parent.”
The country’s online publication Stuff reported proposals include considering both parents’ income and the parenting time provided when calculating child support. The current system only considers the income of the non-custodial parent, which as our readers know is usually the father a.k.a. the ATM, and has been called “unfair and unjust.”
Child support debt in the country under the current system has reached nearly $2 billion.
Among other proposals is putting a cap on penalties for failing to make child support payments. More than one-quarter of the $2 billion child support debt is due to unpaid support while the rest is penalties on the arrears.
The publication quoted the country’s Revenue Minister Peter Dunne as saying, “Families have evolved, and their domestic and financial situations have changed and are often more complex today. … Both parents are far more likely to be working than was the case in 1992 (when the current system was instituted), and often separated fathers have greater involvement with their children.”
What are your thoughts on this? New Zealand’s leaders seem to comprehend the need for child support reform; why don’t ours?
It’s time for child support reform…now!
I wrote this blog because so many men are affected by this scam called child support. I do believe all parents should share the responsibility to take care of their child however it should be fair and equal.
The current system is totally unfair
1. It (ie the staff and legislation) assumes all fathers are “dead-beat”
2. It allows poor mothers to control the children for the single purpose of income
3. It does not deal with the typical case of the mother lying about the father – typically claiming that she does not know where the father is when in fact she does
4. When a responsible and loving father seeks redress of wrongs it forces him to deal with two distinct offices who play off the issue between them
5. Most of the assessment and office work is done by women and most of these women automatically side with the mother and not with either the children or the father
6. It creates penalty situations that encourage fathers to abandon career or family and just do as the mothers do – bludge
7. It impoverishes lower and lower middle class children by destroying the ability of either parent to get ahead – leading to a society of welfare dependants
8. The (usually paying) father has no way of dealing with errors in the long term – you have a limited time to object and if you don’t it is then recorded as acceptance – an you only courses for objection require expensive legal counsel and/or onerous mounts of time and effort
9. If you move to Australia the disparity in costs of living are not taken into account – if you live in a cheap area of Australia you pay the same as if you live in an Expensive area – which means that those living in places like Sydney are doubly disadvantaged
10. There is absolutely no policing of the mothers care of the children – so blatantly bad mothers can spend the money they effectively steal on drugs and alcohol or whatever while totally neglecting the child
11. When there is a dispute the children are not questioned – so that even when the whole family knows there is injustice it is only the mother’s word that carries any power
My ex-wife destroyed our family – then she destroyed me, then systematically attempted to destroy each of the children
and she was paid to do it by a totally corrupt system
if anything exemplifies the problems with NZ society it is the child welfare system
m