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Child Support Overview

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Child support laws throughout the United States seek to provide some stability to the standard of living for children. Child support laws also seek to provide some sense of order after the disruption of divorce and to smooth over the transition from a unified, nuclear family to a two household family, with the parents living separate and apart.

The law requires parents to support their children. It doesn't matter if the parents are married, or if they are living together. The responsibility of child support is that of the parents as individuals or as a unit. It does not matter if the parents have had continued contact after the conception of the child or not. All parents are legally responsible for child support.

Courts are very concerned with providing for children's needs, and one of the most basic needs is economic support. It is in the interests of the state and the court to make sure that children do not slip into poverty, and that they have the ability to grow up to become happy, productive members of society.

The goal of the state support guidelines and the court system is to ensure that each child's standard of living is persevered, as much as possible, to that which would have occurred had the divorce or separation not occurred.

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