At the highest level, local parenting laws in Washington State are driven by Federal policy including the Child Support Enforcement Act (and various amendments) and the Social Security Act’s Title IV-A and Title IV-D child support order enforcement incentives and subsidies. An excellent overview of the last 70 years of legislative history and the reasoning behind the almost 50 legislative updates may be found in the free report ‘The Child Support Enforcement Program – A Legislative History‘ (2014) produced by the Congressional Research Service.
An important take away from the above report is that all states, including Washington, must follow strict Federal guidelines to determine paternity and enforce child support in order to receive millions of dollars of Federal funds. In 2019, Washington State received $104.5M in Title IV-D funding (ESA Briefing Book, page 23) to support the $148.2M Division of Child Support Enforcement budget (71% matching funds). Additionally, the state retained another $137.3M in child support ‘cost avoidance’ (ESA Briefing Book, Child Support Program, page 4) by keeping child support payments destined for Title IV-A families to offset the cost of Medicaid, Basic Food, and TANF programs. In all, $241.8M of Washington State’s budget is funded directly and/or indirectly through child support orders.
For shared parents, the financial interests of the Washington State budget is in direct opposition to the implementation of equal shared custody and an equitable split of child support. The Child Support Incentive Scorecard (ESA Briefing Book, Child Support Program, page 5) provides the metrics that the state must meet to receive 100% of Federal funding including Total Collections and Cost Effectiveness Ratio.
With 71% of the Division of Child Support budget federally funded, growing DCS results in more money. Federally funding incentivizes the state to award primary custody and all financial support to one parent because it increases the total collections DCS will enforce by a factor of six or more. For equal shared parents with 50/50 residential visitation, a 60/40 income split and a $1,000 monthly combined support obligation, a $100 transfer payment for a single child balloons to $600 when both homes are not credited $500 for the equal care of the child. For two or three children and a $2,000 monthly combined support obligation, a 70/30 income split multiples a $400 transfer payment into $1,400, a 3.5x multiplier when $1,000 residential credit is denied.
The multiplier increase in collections for Division of Child Support to enforce significantly increases its Cost Effectiveness Ratio. Better for $100 of DCS resources spent on collecting a $600 payment (6:1) than $100 (1:1). Unsurprisingly, a denial of residential credit also results in a significant amount of cases that require enforcement. Many parents that would have never fallen behind on $400 monthly transfer payments often find themselves in arrears and under DCS enforcement when ordered to pay $1,400 monthly for a decade or more.
When the transfer payment between parents is minimized, the courts often ‘zero out’ a child support order. It is not cost effective to enforce a $50 or $100 per month order nor for courts to process contempt of court orders for support violations of obligor parents who may never be significantly in arrears.
When courts order equal custodial visitation with residential credit to equally protect and credit both parental homes, they simultaneously reduce the need for DCS enforcement and reduce the federal funding Washington States receives to enforce orders.
The State of Washington does not equally protect parent’s access to their children or equally protect parent’s homes with equivalent child support in large part because of Federal child support incentives. The Family Support Act of 1988 emphasized child support enforcement and set in motion changes at the state level including when Washington State in 1991 switched residential credit from being an automatic adjustment to the child support calculations to that of an optional deviation for the court system to decide with federal dollars at stake.
The State of Washington receives more federal money by minimizing shared parenting and denying equal financial protection to shared parenting families. Washington State courts generally order unequal residential custody and parenting plans (see Exhibit 2 of the 2016 Residential Time Summary Report by the Washington State Center For Court Research) that are then paired with child support orders that deny residential credit (see the Washington State 2018 Child Support Order Review, January 2019, Prepared for the 2019 Child Support Schedule Workgroup). Only 7.4% of child support orders receive a residential credit deviation even though 25.3% of parents have 50/50 plans and 58.9% have 25% of more shared visitation for both parents. A 51.5% majority of all child support orders are likely due some amount of residential credit but are denied a deviation by Washington courts.
Federal law requires a quadrennial review of child support guidelines in each state. This has resulted in the final reports of the 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019 Washington State Child Support Schedule Workgroups that have provided thoughtful and sensible recommendations for improving the child support laws.
Federal law does not require Washington State to implement the recommendations of the Child Support Workgroups. In Washington State, this has resulted in the legislature ignoring the main and repeated recommendation of the all Child Support Schedule Workgroups to make residential credit an automatic adjustment to the Child Support Schedule Worksheets.
Currently, the best interests of children to have equal visitation with both parents and be protected by child support at both homes is not supported by federal policy or financial incentives. Parental conflict over child custody and child support generates a tremendous amount of money for the state of Washington, the court system, and the legal system that supports it.