Child support is an important part of life for millions of parents and children. These payments are ordered by the court and help custodial parents care for their children whether or not they have a job. These payments might not always be made by the person ordered to make them, which often leads to serious problems between both parents. Let’s look at some child support statistics in today’s post.
As of 2016 (the most recent data available), there are more than 13.4 million single parents who have custody of their children living in the United States. Close to half of these parents have some form of legal agreement in place for child support. Almost 90 percent of those legal agreements were created in a family law court or in a Title IV-D agency.
A surprising 10 percent of the agreements were created informally between the two parents in the child custody situation. Roughly 22 percent of all the custodial parents in the country requested assistance through the government while also receiving child support payments.
In 2013, the amount of child support still owed to custodial parents totaled $32.9 billion. When broken down to individual accounts, the average amount due each year is roughly $5,700, which amounts to no more than $500 per month. Of that money, just 68.5 percent was actually paid.
As you can see, billions of dollars are paid each year in child support to custodial parents. At the same time, there are millions of dollars left on the table because parents ordered to pay are not making the payments they are required to make.
