Fathers Battling Injustice

Child Support Guidelines Criticized

Posted By: Gordon Bolton
Date: Friday, 24 March 2000, at 8:07 a.m.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Peter Cornakovic (905) 824-9416 or Greg Kershaw (416) 289-1505

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NEWS RELEASE TRANSMITTED BY CANADIAN CORPORATE NEWS

FOR: FATHERS ARE CAPABLE TOO PARENTING ASSOCIATION INC.

MARCH 24, 2000

RE: Child Support Guidelines Unfair: Fathers Are Capable Too: Parenting Association

TORONTO, ONTARIO--

A just released study shows that the Child Support Guidelines are unfair. The report, sponsored by Fathers Are Capable Too (FACT): Parenting Association and produced by statistics, finance and taxation professionals, has been submitted to the Department of Justice and the Attorney Generals Office (Ontario) examining the financial consequences of the Child Support Guidelines on both custodial and non-custodial parents. The conclusions of the study provides overwhelming statistical and factual evidence that the Guidelines and the model used are unfair to child support paying non-custodial parents, 98% of whom are fathers.

The Child Support Guidelines model had the primary objective "to establish a fair standard of support for children to ensure that they continue to benefit from the financial means of both spouses after separation". The Department of Justice implemented the Guidelines based on a Statistics Canada model that even Statistics Canada described as being arbitrary and inaccurate. The study indicates that the current Guidelines abandoned the principles of fairness and equity in their implementation in favour of pushing through increased levels of support to the custodial parent. The Guidelines as implemented leaves most support-paying parents with insufficient funds to support themselves at a level even close to Statistic Canada's "Low Income Cut Off - Income After Tax" (LICO-IAT) levels!

The support-receiving parent on the other hand is placed in a financial situation that is significantly better than the LICO-IAT at all income levels. The support-receiving parent's financial situation improves when support is being received for more children. Support-paying households are placed in financial situations that are significantly more difficult than support receiving households. The support paying parent's situation becomes worse at lower incomes or there are more children being supported. This is contrary to the message stated by Federal authorities.

The study concludes, contrary to myths and stereotypes that the Guideline model consistently results in a massive wealth transfer from paying parents to receiving parents under the guise of "child support". This results in impoverishing paying parents and enriching receiving parents. The Guidelines have used a design model that financially punishes any support-paying parent who manages to maintain an active presence in their children's lives by ignoring the costs of maintaining that relationship. The Child Support Guidelines specifically abandon the objective of fairness and child-centred care in order to increase the level of payments made to receiving parents. They reinforce the fracturing of relations between children and parents in divorce, creating different standards of care between the two households created by separated families.

For more information on the study visit the FACT web site at www.fact.on.ca under the Child Financial Support heading.

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F.A.C.T.