I say 50/50 with no child support. Than both parents are doing their part completely.

It's sick that some people have kids solely for money. I always thought that's what BM did. She got pregnant and left shortly after - wanting alimony and child support but NO custody because she "wasn't ready to be a mom" BM is really dumb and I think she genuinely thought if she popped a kid out, she'd get paid forever. She wasn't awarded anything because DH took full custody. She even wanted to keep the child tax benefits despite not wanting any custody! She said they were for her because "she gave birth" LOL

Personally, I didn't get pregnant until I knew I could afford the child 100% on my own if circumstances came to it. I know that won't happen, but it's nice to know the baby i'm carrying will be fine with or without DH lol

I don't know??? You'd think that given the way CS works and has worked since the beginning of time with men being screwed by the courts, that men would have wisened up by now and been ultra vigilant about wrapping their shit up. But that does not seem to be the case. These whores can't pop out babies every 14 months or so without someone to fertilize their egg.

My kids' father and I have 50/50 custody, no child support.

We did it ourselves, no lawyers, no courts. We wrote it in our separation agreement when we divorced... and were always good about following it. We've gone above and beyond... we've both had times, over the last 10 years, where we've been a little more up/down financially and have helped each other out...borrowing 100$ until payday...paid back...

we've always split the child tax benefits 50/50 as well.

Worked out for us, no issues.

Then again, neither of us are batsh!t crazy, entitled, or hateful towards each other....so....that might have a part to play here.

I think it varies widely by area and a set amount like you stated would have to calculated for the individual areas. As an example $1200 per month rental gets you a house with a yard rather than an apartment in my neighborhood. A 3bd apartment is around $750 average.

My opinion is and always has been that the default should be 50/50 no CS, and the parent who wanted something different would bear the burden of proof.

A better way to stop women from popping out babies is education, IMHO. The effect of parenthood on income potential based on actual statistics of couple vs single, age when first child born, etc. Sex education that is more than a single day or week of health class so the actual biology of pregnancy and preventative birth control can be taught. Yes, it should be parents teaching this, but when you have women like the BM I deal with who flat out say "She'll learn about sex and menstruation at school" and refuse to actually teach. After her sex class, SD11 was convinced that her period would last a couple of hours. :?

Edit to add: The education is for boys AND girls, btw. One of my brother's friends in HS had to take a paternity test because he insisted that there was NO WAY he could be the father - he drank Mountain Dew every day and that made him sterile! My sons (including SS) are getting extensive and repeated wrap your tool talks when they get close to puberty and throughout HS.

A rough and generic breakdown on average costs for my BS:

Health insurance- $25 per month (really have no idea but taking a guess)
Viola rental- $21 per month
Cell phone- $40 per month (Used at both parents house)
Hair cut- $10 per month

Soccer fee and equipment per year- $150

Wrestling fee and equipment per year- $1000 (minimum)

School supplies- $100 (accounting for needing stuff throughout the year and for projects)

Clothing, socks, underwear, shoes,etc. - $750 (for the whole year)

Birthday party gifts for friends- $100 per year

Medicines and incidentals- $100

Breakdown of per person and then by 1/2 for household bills (mortgage, basic utilities) and groceries - $225 per month

Rough estimate of $504 per month for the cost of raising my BS

At my former job my son's portion of the health insurance costs me 300.00 alone. My ex was covering 25.00 of that.

My summer day care is 725.00 a month, ex covers 150.00.

Not all of us are getting rich off of cs.

$400 in CS for 2 kids would amount to a total of $400 a month from mom and dad to take care of a single kid.

It cost more than that and I don't live in a big city. I keep a record of every expense of DS's survivor's benefits. The bottom dollar number it cost's to take care of him per month was higher than that. That's not including a cell phone, school supplies, school lunch, insurance, or any hobbies or wants of his that aren't necessary. I kept track of every dollar spent for DS's well being for a solid year. The average monthly amount was $900. For ONE kid.

BM's child support for 2 kids is less than $400. I'm sure it'd help if we could get her to pay it, but it sure wouldn't cover half the expenses of the skids.

We have SS about 80% of the time during the school year and 50% of the time during the two months of Summer. If DH received child support-which he doesn't, I can't imagine it needing to be more than 200$ a month. Now if it were BM she would want about 400$ per month at 50/50. As of right now she is getting around 200$ unofficially from Babydaddy2 per month until she can afford to take him back to court.

Regardless of how we are going to calculate what it costs to raise a kid (and it seems everyone has a different idea) the issue at hand is that the current system is in no way based on what a child costs to raise. Its based on the child having the same standard of living IN BOTH HOMES, not counting anyones income other than its two parents. Its based on this fantasy that the child should have the same life financially, it would have had if their parents had not split. The fact that there are now two households being supported
by the same amount of income makes this completely impossible and unrealistic, but the courts do not take this into consideration.
This antiquated concept of child support was developed in a world where men earned enough money on a single income to run the household. Women raised children and kept up the home. A divorced woman had sole custody of the children, and no way of supporting them or herself as her purpose in life was to marry and find a man to support her. (And doing this is way more difficult when she's 40 with 3 kids than when she was 20 with none) This resulted in a lot of women and children on government assistance. Child support laws were enacted to reduce the tax burden of supporting all of these single women and their children on welfare.
Currently child support is based on the assumption that the CP will continue to be a stay at home mom, with all living expenses for her and the children paid by her ex. Current child support payments are very similar to what people at that income level can expect to receive in social security if they were to become completely disabled. About $500 a month if they were extremely poor, and moving up from there based on what kind of income they had before they became disabled. And if you notice the difference in payments based on number of children are very small maybe an extra $100 or so, when if child support was designed to cover the childs needs, two children would cost twice as much as one.

So we have this really antiquated calculation system, combined with the fact that in the 80's there were a lot of high profile cases of very wealthy successful men leaving his wife for his much younger secretary, which results in her penniless with no place to live and with 3 children who the father has abandoned in tow and all of them starving with the burden falling upon the American taxpayer while dad was sipping pina coladas with his new playboy bunny wife on a tropical island somewhere. There were also some high profile cases of successful men quitting high paying jobs to work at mcdonalds and the like to avoid meaningful child support payments so he can brag that his ex wife got nothing. This resulted in almost unanimous support for tougher child support enforcement laws, which are now so tough we have large numbers of men that have been assessed child support at figures higher than their actual earnings, sitting in jail in a country where debtors prisons are illegal. These men were originally making every effort to pay, but for whatever reason missed a few payments so their license was suspended, which made coming up with the money even harder, and then lost their jobs completely when they went to prison for non payment. In one of the recent high profile cases of an unarmed black man being shot to death by police, the man initially decided to evade the officer because he'd already lost his job while in jail for non payment, and didn't want to go back to jail since with no job he clearly couldn't pay.
To make this even worse, I work for a financial services company. To work in my department you are required to hold certain financial licenses. Many of our employees work on commission. If you fall behind on child support payments, you are no longer eligible to hold the license that is required to perform your job. So a financial advisor has a child support payment based on his usual income which might be 100k a year who hits a rough patch for a few months and cant afford his CS payments, will probably lose his license forcing the company to fire him. And since he cant have the license anymore, there is really no other job he can get that will pay him even close to that kind of money with his work experience. But his payments will likely stay the same.

This system benefits nobody except for the women who have figured out that they don't need to work if they have children. This system works best to the benefit of complete nutcases, like my neighbors ex wife who was allowed to move his children to the other side of the country despite the fact that he was an involved father. She then proceeded to take him to court 97 times over the next 20 years for child support adjustments for children he never saw because she wouldn't let him. His new wife had to work herself and pay all the bills because between the attorneys fees the alimony and the CS, he worked 60 hours a week and had nothing left over for himself or the family that was actually in his life. All his money went to his spiteful ex who has never had to work, and two children he hadn't been allowed to see since they were in diapers. His kids are in their 30's now and the ex is still now trying to sue him for part of his social security and a pension from a job he got years after the divorce.

Whatever, sorry, just my rant. This whole thing is infuriating especially considering my personal situation.
My long time boyfriend and I hit a rough patch and saw other people for a while. A girl he was seeing knew he would rather be with me and was afraid he'd go back to me. Which he did, except she'd already sabotaged birth control. He stayed with her when he found out she was pregnant, and was completely miserable for a few years while trying to do the right thing, until she decided she didn't actually want him that badly and left him. We got back together.
Since then its been 20k in legal fees, most of his money goes to the attorneys the daycare or to the kids health insurance, and this is with 50/50 custody. Anything we do to save money will result in the whore modifying for more CS. To make matters worse we are originally from the other side of the country and came to the state we currently live in temporarily to see what it was like. Our families and friends are 1000 miles away and our parents are getting older and need help and we literally can't go home because we won't be able to afford to live there once his child support gets adjusted to him having only the summers. (Not to mention the whole having to find a job thing)
So im dating the same guy ive been with most of my life, except now everything is nothing but court battles and drama and bills no reasonable person can pay and CPS visits and welfare checks by police while the lunatic sits there and calls everybody she can over and over trying to keep the kid away from us because she can't bear the though of the girl whose boyfriend she stole being around child she created to keep him. All in the name of antiquated child support and custody laws that haven't been updated since long before women had the right to vote.

I think $400 per month is sufficient for most "average" families who are OK with not having the best cut meats or freshest produce or insist on living in the most expensive town in their state.

If the roles were reversed and we had placement of the skids, $400 would definitely cover the cost of food, clothes, phones and entertainment. But I am frugal.

BM has a live in, employed boyfriend, gets $800 CS, collects SSI for some mystery ailment, waitresses at a popular pub (and grossly under-reports to the state -- claiming"she makes $100 per week"), receives food stamps and occasionally fills in as a teacher's aid. She couldn't make $400 per month cover expenses because she has no concept of a budget and no self control when at the mall. She barely survives now, leaving us all scratching our heads wondering where this money goes.

$400 to one person is $4 to another. It is tough to create any standard that makes more sense than what it SHOULD be for 2 willing and able parents: As close to 50/50 placement as possible, mommy covers her costs in her home, daddy covers his. Even if mom is a dog walker and dad is a partner at a successful law firm. 50 f*cking 50. Period.

I've lurked here for a while but haven't posted. But I had to say something...

Capping CS would not prevent women from "popping out babies." If men and women kept their pants on, that would help.

And your numbers seem off...

$300 a month for food for two kids? Are they toddlers? We could not feed teenaged SS on $150 a month—not even if we fed him crappy, processed, prepackaged food, which we won't, because it is not healthy. Real food—fresh fruits and veggies and healthy (fresh) protein are expensive. Even when you aren't buying the "best cuts." Chicken, fish, eggs...they aren't cheap, especially when you're buying enough to properly nourish a growing human.

There is a lot more to life as a child than food, clothing, healthcare and shelter. One could argue that the federal prisons provide those minimums for inmates. I would hope our kids deserve more. Things like sports, birthday parties, music lessons...no one *wants* to pay for these, but they are good for a kid and teach life skills like discipline and teamwork. A lot of these activities help kids with schoolwork too. I'm not saying that impoverished parents should have to sign Johnny up for violin, but if the parents have the means, then they shouldn't be the sole responsibility of the CP simply because the NCP doesn't think they are necessary.

I doubt it.

The fact they may one day have to pay CS doesn't seem to discourage men from sticking their d*** in or encourage them to take proactive birth control measures...so why should the opposite reality discourage women?

That's how it is here Willow.... you get a simply CS per child, and no extra's. If you want to live like a queen you will have to find a job, a woman can't simply sit at home and cry... courts will tell her - then find a job.

I still say - governments should charge tax per child.... to both parents, not only one with an income.. and you should get an incentive for not having children... that should stop money grabbing BM's as well...

Oh if you do not have an income to pay your taxes, it's calculated back into workable hours, you get a broom, bucket etc, start sweeping streets, washing buildings, raking parks, picking up dead leaves or what ever.... if you can't pay you work it back in your town..