Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice, Lawton Nuss, signed the 2012 KS Child Support Guidelines into law, to be effective on April 1st, 2012. Once again, instead of lawmakers, the guidelines were revised by the KS Child Support Guidelines Advisory Committee that consists of mostly judges and attorneys, who ultimately benefit from the increased child support cash flow and conflict between parents.

No parent participation was allowed on the committee. A blind-sighted public survey was conducted, without publishing the justification data that went into creating the guideline formulas. As usual, the committee’s goal was to maximize the child support cash flow in the system, so that more of the federal incentives for collecting child support can benefit the legal professionals and organizations who serve on this committee.

The guidelines will once again give all of the child support money to one parent alone (mostly mothers), even in equal-time parenting cases, instead of sharing it proportionate to parenting times. The guidelines expect that the receiving parent will cover all direct expenses of the children for both households. And if they don’t, there is no enforcement in the law about how child support dollars are spent!!! Paying parents will be alienated in their children’s eyes as the non-providing parent.

The child support receiving parent will be expected to provide clothing, misc needs, toys, electronics, pocket money, entertainment expenses for the paying parent’s home. These expenses are known by the economists, and could easily be shared proportionate to parenting time for each parent. But the committee claims that this would cause conflict! This is their cheap excuse for preventing one parent from spending any money for their children, in an effort to maximize their profits.

KS Child Support Guidelines require a systemic change. The authority should be taken away from the judicial system and be given to legislators, where public input is maximized. The current situation is an obvious conflict of interest, especially with no parent participation allowed.

(Although this post specifies Kansas, this is a problem across many states which will be amplified as divorce rates in this country continue to climb. I want to provide an open forum to discuss the situation in hopes of informing/uniting those who recognize these continued guidelines for what they are - a system to profit off of family insecurity).