How Australia's system hurts fathers and their children.
Written by Dr Andrew Lancaster, Head of Child Support Australia
Summary
Child support is often unfair to fathers in Australia because the system doesn't account for personal financial circumstances, including income tax, new living expenses, and loss of assets.
Fathers with higher incomes and less custody tend to contribute more but receive less benefit. They lose financial control due to the government's grab-all approach. The biased child support system underpins and reinforces bias against men in public policy and the Family Court.
The greatest source of frustration and inequity for many fathers is being railroaded into the role of a distant financial provider. Dads want to spend money on their kids directly, not by transferring funds to someone else. They would be far happier with the financial burden if they saw their children more often.
Introduction
Good men are stoic. They don’t complain or ask for much. They shoulder burdens and protect those around them.
Fathers, for the most part, are good men. They would lay down their lives for their children without a second thought. How many times have you heard of a drowning incident where kids got into trouble, and the only one to die was the father who dove in to help?
So, why do fathers complain about paying child support? Why do they see it as unfair? Let’s address some truths that need to be highlighted. Here’s why child support is so unfair to fathers.
1. Payment Amounts are Literally Unfair
Australian uses an income shares model to determine how much child support parents pay. Parents effectively pool part of their incomes into a combined fund, from which they draw money in proportion to the amount of care each provides. Fathers tend to be payers due to higher incomes (meaning they contribute more) and less custody (meaning they take out less).
Child support calculations are unfair to fathers because they do not properly account for:
- the basic costs of raising a child
- the amount of tax he pays
- his higher expenses from living alone or supporting a new partner or family
- the loss of wealth, such as his home, due to separation or divorce.
The costs of children tables used in the calculations do not reflect ordinary living costs. Instead, costs are assumed to rise with income, as if the father were living with the mother and children in an intact family. Fathers may, in fact, be struggling financially despite what their tax return says.
On the flipside, the same calculations also hurt mothers who share care evenly and earn a good income. They may be unfairly forced to pay child support to fathers with lower incomes. Fathers on low incomes, meanwhile, often escape the unfairness of the income-based scheme, paying very little.
2. Payment is in Full and by Force
Child support in Australia largely removes a father’s discretion to spend on his children as he sees fit. The Australian Government has effectively taken control of his finances. The calculations are designed to extract the full amount a father would spend on his children within an intact family, leaving nothing to spare.
It’s often forgotten that fathers enjoy spending money on their children directly. They may also need to adjust spending based on their unique circumstances. However, for many fathers with limited contact, the funds are already allocated to the mother by the government. There is no discretionary income for the father to spend out of generosity.
This is a socialist approach to a common problem. Everyone should be aware of the issues with that. I’ll explain the negative impacts further down.
3. Child Support Underpins Systemic Bias
Why do you think Family Court judges and judicial registrars are so willing to grant full or nearly complete custody of children to mothers in most circumstances, including when they're unemployed or on low incomes? A key reason is that if the father has any money, the judge knows the mother will be able to obtain much of it through child support.
In parenting matters, judges seem to show little interest in the respective ability of each parent to financially provide for their child. So, rather than allowing a child to spend significant time with their well-off father, the family law and child support systems conspire to place the child with the lower-income mother and make the father pay for it.
And public policy is geared to inflict further pain on fathers. Domestic violence campaigns assume men are the perpetrators, overlooking abuse by women. Financial incentives for women to report domestic violence, like emergency payments and housing assistance, lead to misuse, further disadvantaging men.
The integration of child support, family law, and domestic violence systems to encourage a fatherless society is perhaps the most unfair impact of child support. Fathers have reasonable access to their children removed, then are forced to pay into this arrangement. Criminal proceedings may be involved. Innocent fathers are reduced to maligned financial slaves, which is why too many end up taking their own lives.
Negative Outcomes of an Unfair System
Socialism never works and child support in Australia provides further evidence of that. These are all serious problems that could be alleviated to a significant extent by lessening financial unfairness towards fathers:
- Children are routinely denied access to their fathers by mothers and/or the Family Court of Australia.
- Fathers are routinely victims of false allegations of domestic violence, giving mothers control over accommodation and custody.
- Parents reduce their incomes for more favourable assessments, with the average incomes of parents involved with child support far below those of other prime-age adults.
A fairer child support system, such as the Pay for Extra Care model with realistic costs, would benefit Australian fathers, along with their children and the community as a whole. We can take away some or much of the profit motive associated with controlling custody and minimising income.
Australia would be better off adopting a more sensible approach with improved incentives and fewer damaging effects on parent-child relationships. In being to unfair to fathers and treating them as second-class citizens, we prioritise misguided social justice over the welfare of everyone.
Timothy Van Wely
The care percentage calculations CSA use along with financial contributions calculation percentage are predatory to the financial parent.
The use of previous financial year income for child support calculations by the department and not of current earnings is open to abuse and will often result in victimised financial parents choosing poverty over sanctioned abuse – and often times suicide. Of course there is a flip side resulting in financial parents using this to their advantage.
There is also no mechanism or law to ensure that a parent should be held accountable for choosing to not work and or work to their potential .ie. a trade qualified parent choosing a 20 hour week part time cleaning job instead of the better paid equivalent.
That a parent with a higher percent of care, i.e., 60/40 care arrangement should even have to work is not considered. This in itself incentivises financial abuse of one parent over the other. It allows for a lifestyle choice in leiu of providing stable ‘equally’ contributing households. In light of new laws surrounding emotional/psychological abuse this should open the public’s eyes to predatory behaviour used to perpetuate this cycle.
Another benefit often enjoyed by one parent over the other is the knowledge the family court will award a higher percentage of assets in a divorce to the non financial parent without consideration of the large amounts in child support to be paid in the future.
A liability taxed on the financial parent only.
This will often result in the financial parent working excessive hours and financially struggling to make ends meet.
CSA take no accountability in regards to admitting liabilty or recovering money paid to the non financial parent incorrectly though quite rightly will the other way round..
Nor will CSA investigate any fraudulent tax evasion reported to it though will seize any tax returns if said money is owed – mistakes made by the department or not.
Until the family court and CSA laws are overhauled and a equality based case by case system implemented there will continue government sanctioned abuse.
Written by a loving parent at wits end.
Dr Andrew Lancaster
The scheme has been designed with the idea that “child support” payments magically benefit the child and, therefore, extracting the money is always the priority. They haven’t accounted for anything else, such as the payer parent being damaged in multiple ways (which hurts kids) and kids ending up stuck in low-income households with a mother and her boyfriend (also a bad result).
Helen Henshaw
Child support Australia is a joke and desperately needs a major overhaul. They took more than 1/2 of my son’s wages, (he gets paid monthly). So now he doesn’t have enough to live on and pay his monthly commitments. He has full custody of one of his daughters yet the mother doesn’t pay child support. His other 2 daughters are with their mothers. He doesn’t get to see them because 1 of the mothers put a restraining order on my son for what reason, we have no idea and other one we have no idea where she is. I am helping him out as much as I can. My son is stressed enough without child support adding to it. They make paying parents lives hell.
Jane
ex doesn’t has chosen not to work and has not had a job for a while. He lives off money from parents bank account and transfers and absorbed 2 million. Child support uses my income and compares it to him. He pays minimum amount of child support and has another child.
Marie
what if the mother tell misfalse information to the child support service that the father never seen her daughter 365 days. The father got a phone call from the service saying you have backpay to pay because you have not seen your daughter for a while. meanwhile, we just spent 3weeks with his daughter during school holidays. Definitely, unfair for all the father’s out there working hard to provide for their kids and this needs to change this year 2025.
Dr Andrew Lancaster
You need at least one night a week (52 nights a year) of care before it impacts your assessment.
You can dispute the care amount, and this is very common. Providing evidence is important. Phone logs, photos, messages, and even statuatory declarations from witnesses can all be used.
max
Totally agree with all the written. Its that fact and pity that all suffering nut none are coming forward for a change.
max
hello, I think i fell for the system too. I just got a lump sum as lost the job now even though i did inform the department of the lump sum, they have backdated my payment and end up paying huge amount. i got payment on 21 june and i told them on 1 jul that i got payment, reply was thats ok we got the new assessment in place so it would not affect. but when did the tax return they send me a due of big sum backdating the payment including the lump sum.
Ja
I’m financially in a noose because of child support
Fake restraining order and moving away gave the ex 100% any attempt to reach an agreement she cries poor the children have lived with 2 different men in as many years and all I can do is pay I’m homeless after divorce and left with all the marital debts
Dr Andrew Lancaster
Don’t know if it would help but a compromise might be if you have the kids 4-5 nights per fortnight. It might reduce her payments by around 25% or so but would give her a break and you would get some financial relief. Try the child support calculator: https://childsupportaustralia.com/calculator-estimator/