Any Illinois case in which the parents of one or more children split up and then live in separate residences with have various things to work through. Those issues include where the children will live and how much parenting time the father and mother will respectively get each week. Another issue that comes up often is child support, typically paid to the parent who got the majority of the parenting time from the other parent.
This is an issue that is discussed much in society. Often those discussions center on how much the noncustodial parent should pay and how that money should be collected. Accountability for how the money is spent, and how payments are affected by joint custody situations are also common topics. Recently, a journalist proposed that all custodial parents get child support payments and offered a proposal to that end.
She calls the proposal Minimum Guaranteed Child Support. It would amount to a government guarantee that all custodial single parents would receive payments meant to support their children. This would be disbursed regardless of whether or not it had been originally collected from the noncustodial parent, with the difference between the amount of funds collected and the amount to be paid to the custodial parent being made up by the government. This would, in the journalist’s view, replace the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
The journalist’s states her primary focus as wanting to ensure that children in single parent households have sufficient financial resources to meet all of their material needs. In most cases, child support considerations in Illinois and elsewhere can be complex. A qualified attorney can advise anyone facing those issues about how to proceed.
Source: Trust.org, “What If All Single Parents Received Child Support?” Rita Henley Jensen, Feb. 15, 2014
