Bellevue Legal News: Seattle Divorce & Domestic Violence Lawyer

Child Support Payments Drop For First Time In 34 Years

For the first time since records began being kept in 1976, the amount of money received by children through child support payments has dropped. In 2009, $26.4 billion in child support payments were made across the country, a 0.07 percent drop since 2008 and the first drop ever recorded in over three decades. While the data has not been completely compiled yet for 2010, officials also believe that the drop in child support payments will continue.

Family law experts and economists believe that the drop in child support payments is the result of several different factors, but that the root cause of all of these factors is the recent recession. First and foremost, the poor job market means that more people who owe child support are without work and unable to make payments. At the same time, this means that the Washington State government is unable to garnish wages from paychecks. While unemployment checks can still be garnished by up to 25 percent, children still see smaller checks and less support when their parents lose jobs.

In other cases, some parents who have managed to keep their jobs are simply seeing less work and smaller paychecks – which can translate into smaller child support payments. In 2009, thousands of those struggling with unemployment or a drop in wages returned to court to request reductions in child support payments.

The average monthly child support payment in the United States in 2009 was $250.

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