Child-support bill gets a Senate OK

An overhaul of the 12-year-old system that determines how much noncustodial parents pay in child support received the preliminary support of the Senate on Friday in a unanimous vote.

The bill primarily updates guideline tables for child support, reflecting how much it costs to rear a child and therefore how much a noncustodial parent should be required to pay. Legislators have not changed the tables since 1994.

Not only is the system antiquated, SB195's sponsor Sen. Gregory Bell, R-Fruit Heights, said, but the existing guidelines were never even based on real economic factors.

"There was no economic methodology for why the guidelines were adopted in the first place," he said.

Sen. Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, a family law attorney, said he had always opposed such changes.

Hillyard said he never bought the argument that child-support payment guidelines need to increase with inflation because parents' salary also increased, meaning they would pay more in child support anyway. But Bell presented a new argument, swaying Hillyard in favor of the bill.

"We were way, way below (in determining how much is paid using the guidelines) originally," Hillyard said.

For example, in a family making a combined $40,000 a year with two children, the current estimation for how much it costs to support a child per month is $789. According to a study done by economist Ernst Engle, child support should be about $1,000 for such a family.

Because Bell and a 2003 Child Support Guidelines Committee thought Engle slightly overestimated costs, he didn't want to make such a drastic increase all at once.

Instead, he submitted a proposal that would only modestly increase the payments. For a family making $40,000 a year with two children, Bell now suggests $881 should be the amount necessary to a child's support, a 12 percent increase.

That figure is not how much the noncustodial parent pays in child support; it is the total amount shared by the two parents. The total is divided between the parents based on each one's income.

Bell's bill also caps increases at 25 percent.

Despite the cap and unanimous support, SB195 did not make it through the Senate unscathed, as Hillyard passed an amendment that opponents said "gutted" the bill conflicted with federal guidelines.

The amendment modified the legislation so it only applies to divorces that take place after Jan. 1, 2007, unless both parents' income increases by at least 10 percent.

Although the bill still has many hurdles to clear with only a week and a half left in the session, Stewart Ralphs, executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake, thinks it will become law before next year.

"I think it has a good chance because the people who have the knowledge of (this area of) the law are carrying it," he said.

Rep. Lorie Fowlke, R-Orem, is the House sponsor.

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