Should child support be ordered reduced as soon as (automatically when) the supporting parent loses his/her job through no fault of his/her own?
Of course.
The only reason we don’t have such a law in place is because of greedy people who don’t want child support payments to stop or decrease under any circumstances.
Any politician who would have the guts to stand up for a law that would condition the payment of child support upon the obligor having employment (or some other reliable source of un-earned income) would not be re-elected.
Now clearly the law should not be that one pays child support only if one has a job or steady income because we know that there are many child support payors who would simply quit their jobs or be underemployed to avoid paying child support.
But your question was why don’t we have a law that provides you don’t have to pay child support in the event you lose a job through no fault of your own. Clearly such a law should exist. You don’t have the ability to pay child support if you don’t earn money through your job. And you can earn money through your job if you don’t have that job due to no fault of your own.
If Mom and Dad are married and Dad loses his job, the family’s lifestyle naturally and inexorably decreases in response to the resulting loss of income. This is unfortunate, but nobody can say this is unfair. What’s so perverse is that if Mom and Dad get divorced, and then Dad loses his job, he can (and almost always is) ordered to maintain the lifestyle of his ex-wife and children, even though he has no ability to do so. This is clearly not just unfair, but immoral, and it is not the purpose of the law to impose such impossible burdens.
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