editors note: Please be advised that several members of NCFC
are actually RECIPIENTS of child support. They concur that the current guidelines
unfairly favor the recipient and cannot be justified by actual differential expenses
where there are 2 involved parents.
NCFC Pittsburgh Chapter is funding an economic study to be done by senior economic
consultant Mark Rogers. The purposes of the study are as follows:
1) The Study will provide written economic analysis and critique of the Pennsylvania child
support guidelines. The analysis tasks include:
a) Deriving two alternative child cost tables to the official Income Shares child cost schedules. These would be an Income Shares schedule adjusted for the additional cost of maintaining two households instead of one. This would be an adjustment for the reduction in available income for the adults and would not take into account the separate issue of child costs in both households. The second alternative cost schedule would be a Cost Shares cost schedule that is based on the standard of living of two separate adult households of single parents.
b) Conducting standard of living impact analysis of the official guidelines' cost schedule with the two alternative cost schedules.
c) Critiquing the official parenting time assumptions in the guidelines and offer more economically sound parenting time adjustments. The official assumption that standard parenting time costs are already taken into account is not valid and can be documented as such.
NCFC's anticipated use of this Study is three-fold.
1. First, we will use the Study to educate the Child Support Committees that the existing guidelines are constitutionally flawed.
2. Second, we will use the Study to educate the Legislature about the unconstitutionality of the present guidelines.
3. Third and most importantly, we want to get this study into as many hands of our membership as possible to use at their next support modification hearing as a part of their exhibits and state that the present guidelines are unconstitutional. We do not anticipate any hearing officer or Common Pleas court judge to act or understand this concept. Rather, we hope that one of these members will take the issue on appeal to the Appellate Courts of Pennsylvania, and maybe, to the US Supreme Court.