On behalf of The Law Office of Gustavo E. Frances, P.A.
In American culture, kids’ level of exposure to noncustodial parents remains isolated from one’s responsibility to financially support children. This alone suggests that the principal role of the noncustodial parent is monetarily focused. Activists cite the lack of legislative intention to advance the personal relationship between the child and the non-resident parent (typically fathers), drawing the heavy scrutiny of America’s primary focus where family units are concerned.
Parents may understand the growing need to bond financial and emotional responsibility, yet legislative disinterest is the paradox that draws the ire of those objectified as financiers yet discounted as parents of equal value.
According to one child support attorney in Fort Lauderdale, bonding emotional and financial maintenance may remove ambiguity from an embattled legal system torn between the enforcement of monetary responsibility, and the ubiquitous need for emotional growth in children. Here’s why.
Children Have Needed Greater Than Laws Allow
In jurisprudential lore, courts contend that it’s inappropriate when deciding on parental interaction, to consider the consequences that the decision on interaction will have on the maintenance liability already established. Conversely, child support orders are irrelevant to visitation orders previously entered. Laws clearly perceive an incongruency exists between physical needs and psychological needs.
No legislation can account for an individual’s needs during their first eighteen years of existence. Whereas some children recluse, others thrive in large social settings. Some children require constant love and attention, whereas others may require special nutrition.
Financial support is mandatory. Physical contact with both parents is not. Laws cannot balance that which is unknown with that which is required, although doing so may improve children’s ability to succeed.
Parents Should Be Equally Accountable
It’s easy to put one’s Fort Lauderdale child support lawyer to work on increasing support orders or fighting to establish visitation. What becomes an arduous task is monitoring and enforcing, equal accountability.
As some principalities allow child support to scale as contact increases, noncustodial parents have leveraged their right to spend more time with children to lower financial responsibility. In most other states, custodial parents utilize what many believe to be a ‘pay to play model of visitation.
America’s unorthodox method of enforcing financial responsibility creates culpability for one parent. It’s widely accepted that child support is spendable however the custodial parent sees fit, yet recipients are only ‘loosely’ bound by visitation rules as the threat of imprisonment begins only when financial responsibility fails.
Equal accountability is possible when both parents’ responsibilities are enforced under a unified system.
Your Takeaway
The correlation between noncustodial parents and their children does not consist only of their contact but also embraces other legal issues such as parental responsibility and payment of acceptable child support. To be frank, it’s understandable that judges shy away from ‘strategically bargaining’ for greater custody or visitation time with noncustodial parents as the proprietary solution to lowering financial payments to children.
However, recognizing the frequency of contact by noncustodial parents and children, and realizing equalized visitation time and child support responsibility between both parents could improve children’s well-being, American municipalities would spend less on enforcement, and more on improving the communities which families call home.
As today’s child demands greater exposure to both parents for socioeconomic reasons, it’s time to rewrite the archaic definition of ‘best interests of the child’ and meld physical and financial responsibility.
When you need a Fort Lauderdale divorce attorney, you can contact us by click here or calling at 954-533-2756 for a free consultation.
