As many of you know, the State of New Hampshire has enlisted a group of economists from UNH to review and make recommendations on the modification of the current NH child support guidelines. Through the months of November, public hearings were held to gather input for the study committee. Hopefully, with this public input, and the will of the Legislature, perhaps fairer guidelines may be adopted in our lifetime.
However, having more reasonable guidelines is only part of the problem with the current child support system. The arguably bigger problem with the system is the generous discretion family court judges and child support referees have in determining what constitutes income. After all, what does it matter if there is a formula to calculate a “fair” amount of support if the Judge can simply and arbitrarily decide what the obligor and obligee’s respective incomes are? In the IT community, we have a saying: “garbage in is garbage out”. An apt description of today’s child support system.