Every parent in the child support system has asked this question. When it’s time to pay for ballet, a band instrument or the travel hockey team, who pays?

The short answer: Unless you agree to something else, child support payments are all you pay, or they’re all you get.

The long answer: Child support amounts come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s studies of family spending on children. These studies measure total family spending on children. Although the studies exclude some things, these exclusions are health care costs, college tuition and parental life insurance.

Extra-curricular activities are not on the list of exclusions. That means extra-curricular activities are included in the general costs of raising a child and factored directly into child support payments. So when a parent pays support, part of the payment is meant to cover extra-curricular activities.

Child support is meant to allocate the parents’ money for the children based on each parent’s overnights with the child. Let’s look at an example:

Taylor has 100 overnights with the child, or 27 percent of the child’s overnights each year. If Taylor had 0 overnights, based on Taylor’s income, Taylor would pay $500 per month in child support. But Taylor pays only $250 per month. The $250 that Taylor keeps from Taylor’s base support amount accounts for the child’s needs during the 100 overnights that the child spends with Taylor.

Blake, the child’s other parent, has a base support of $400 per month, based on Blake’s income. Blake spends 265 overnights per year with the child. Blake keeps all of the $400 base support and receives $250 per month from Taylor. This money is for Blake to provide for the child during the 265 overnights each year that the child is with Blake.

After child support, Taylor has $250 per month for child expenses, and Blake has $650 per month for child expenses. Taylor has 27 percent of the child’s money and 27 percent of the child’s time. Blake has 73 percent of the child’s money and 73 percent of the child’s time.

The child support formula assumes that expenses will naturally fall such that Taylor will pay for 27 percent of the extracurricular expenses and Blake will pay 73 percent.

That is a nice assumption. In reality, unless there’s a court order to the contrary, neither parent has to pay for anything.

Neither parent has to pay anything directly towards a child’s extra-curricular activity. A parent paying support can write a check for the support amount and refuse to spend even another dime on the child. By the same token, the parent receiving support doesn’t have to put the child in any activity, either. The parent receiving support has no accountability whatsoever for how they spend the payments.

If it sounds like this system creates a game of chicken between parents as to who writes the check for violin, soccer and summer camp, it does exactly that. Ultimately, the parent wanting the child in the activity ends up paying more than their share.

Parents are allowed to make agreements as to how they will apportion extra-curricular expenses. But unless they agree, the courts in Northern Michigan do not ordinarily force a parent to pay anything in addition to base support. Nor do they force a parent to pay directly for a child’s extra-curricular activity.

See the U.S. Department of Agriculture studies here:
https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/expenditures_on_children_by_families/crc2013.pdf

See my child support website here:
www.miestimator.com