- Historically, child support was an issue up to the parties in at-fault divorces in local Courts. If an agreement could not be reached, it was calculated by the Courts on a case by case basis balancing the ‘needs of the child’ with ‘ability to pay’ doctrines.
- The ‘needs of the child’ was only based on the marginal costs of children since there was no easy way to calculate the shared costs of children (like housing).
- The result was estimates of 10%/20% (1 child/2 children) during the 1960 – 1980 period.
- Federal involvement was limited to enforcing child support orders calculated by local jurisdictions.
- With the passage of no-fault divorce and increasing federal expenditures on public welfare, there was a perception that poverty (mostly by single mothers with children) was caused by the high rate of divorce and inadequate/widely varied child support awards.
- The first major federal attempt to enter the child support arena occurred with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1974. It created a new government bureaucracy (OCSE) that required states to operate child support enforcement programs in order to receive federal welfare funds.
- Supporters realized that it suffered from two problems: limited scope (Title IV-D cases) and inadequate child support awards.
- It became clear that the only way OCSE was going to meet the goals of its supporters was to require states to set awards based on a small set of criteria for all cases.
- The first national legislation regarding child support guidelines occurred with the passage of the Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984 (CSEA). While it did not make guidelines mandatory (they were advisory), it gave OCSE the responsibility for providing technical guideline assistance to states. It also created the 1984-87 Child Support Guidelines Project to study state child support guidelines. The overall goal of the legislation was to promote consistency and higher child support amounts.
- Using valuable information gained from CSEA, Congress passed the Family Support Act of 1988 (FSA). It required states to use a uniform presumptive amount of child support based on specific descriptive and numeric criteria and the income of non-custodial parent for all cases (Title IV-D and non-Title IV-D) if the states wanted to continue receiving federal welfare money.