Often, better parents. Or better schools, a better break in life, a chance to be happy, and to have her basic necessities met. When the question is narrowed to, How much money does a child need to have her basic needs met, we turn to the Michigan Child Support Formula for answers. These amounts together tell us what the financial support of the child is supposed to be, week to week. This was a realm of rhetoric and melodrama, where results were far from uniform, often arbitrary and based on individual family patterns and choices as to expenditures for children.
Some families pay for ballet lessons, others have to be satisfied with purchasing soap.
With the addition of this arrearage payment guideline, the Formula manual for the first time addresses the payment of arrearages, a child support enforcement issue at the frontier. Found on pp. The latter statement is inherent in family law, indeed in our basic notions of justice. The true policy statement is that arrearages should be paid off as quickly as possible, therefore. Unless the recipient is able to obtain replacement funds that cheaply, it makes sense to see that arrearages are paid as quickly as possible.