Many non-custodial parents complain about the way that child support affects their wallet — and it does, significantly — but the pain of child support can often be much more than financial.   

Alphonso Gibbs, father of one, of Baltimore, Md., knows the high cost of child support all too well. Fourteen years ago, when he and his wife divorced and he started paying child support for his son, meeting the amount — close to 30 percent of his gross pay — each month was “challenging to say the least,” he says.  

Gibbs and his ex-wife divorced in California, the same state they were married in 17 years ago. But after the divorce, Gibbs’ ex-wife moved to Georgia to earn a law degree, he said. “I was paying her California money while she was living in Georgia.”  

Child support calculations differ by state, but most states use a standard formula, calculating each parent’s income and then taking a portion of the non-custodial parent’s income and calling it child support.  While he isn't upset at his ex, Gibbs has been consistently disappointed by the way he feels the system favors her. “I am guilty until proven innocent in every way,” he says. “Meanwhile, she is always innocent.  No matter what she says.”  

These built in incentives for the “winner” in the legal system are what Robert Ferrer, board member of the Children’s Rights Council of Illinois (CRC-IL)( http://www.equalparentingillinois.org/), a non-custodial parents and children’s rights organization in Illinois that advocates for equal parenting time, calls “carrots.”  And they only add to the animosity in any divorce, he says.  

Gibbs was lucky. Unlike many non-custodial parents, he was able to get his child support order modified once is ex-wife graduated from law school based on money she could potentially earn — a fact that made Gibbs’ case unique, says Ferrer. “According to the Urban Institute (an institute investigating and analyzing U.S. social and economic problems and issues), less than one in 20 non-custodial parents seeking modifications in their child support  —  many for reasonable reasons such as job loss, change or incapacitation — is approved,” says Ferrer,  

“The courts judge parents on their ability to make money, not necessarily on the amount they make,” says Ferrer. In Gibbs’ case, this fact was helpful, but in the vast majority of cases, the non-custodial parent — most often the father -- is not able to modify their support order even with legitimate and well-documented reasons.