Every four years the Child Support Schedule (CSS) Workgroup members meet to discuss child support related issues and make recommendations to the legislature. The 2023 CSS Workgroup report has now been sent to the legislature.
As a Workgroup member who participated on the Economic Table and Residential Credit subcommittees, I can attest that there was often significant disagreement but in the end, significant compromise as well to achieve consensus.
I support these recommendations and add the following comments about sections in the report that I think are important qualifiers.
First off is extending the economic table to $50,000 combined monthly net income. This will address the issues of the adequacy of child support orders for decades to come in regards to high income and 3-parent families that are over the current limit of $12,000. The problem is that there is no equitable and predictable way to share that money for families that significantly share custody. That means additional expenses litigation and parental conflict to try to find agreement in the absence of an automatic residential credit adjustment on the child support schedule worksheet.
Second is the 35% threshold for residential credit. In the spirit of consensus, I’ll accept that getting the legislature to implement residential credit at any level is something that can and should be supported. However, I would prefer to see a threshold of 1 out of 7 (14%) of nights instead of 11 out of 30 (35%) to avoid the cliff effect (a small change in time has a big effect on child support) and to minimize parental conflict. Parental conflict peaks at around 35% shared custody and is significantly less for 50/50 arrangements. Denying a parent residential credit for 10 of 30 (33%) of nights but approving it for 11 out of 30 (36%) guarantees a fight over 1 night a month because of the significant change in cash child support payments transferred between parents.
RCW 26.19.001 requires that child support be adequate, equitable, and predictable. The Workgroup’s recommendations will hopefully guide the legislature to creating a better child support system here in Washington state.