We were told in court that it is DH's duty to pay his CS to BM, and that was it. It was not our responsibility to worry about how the money was used. It was up to BM to see that bills were paid and children had what they needed, and that how she used it was none of DH's business. That was as far as anybody would go with it for us.

Reality is that there is no court enforced allocation for how CS is spent. It goes from the NCP to the CP who can actually spend it any way they like.

In our case, my Wife receives CS from BioDad in order to help support my SS. We don't need the money but it goes in the general operating account for the family. So, I guess on some level the pittance in CS that BioDad pays does go to pay for housing, food, gas, clothing, vacations, etc.... for our family.

Interestingly the CS my Wife receives does not cover more than ~20% of the monthly costs for the Skid. Some NCPs get nailed with outrageously high CS others pay next to nothing.

The concept of CS providing adequate resources for the kids so that they can retain a standard of living equal to the joint income of their parents and are not penalized by divorce/out of wedlock birth makes sense to me. However, in the real world it does not usually work so well. In general NCPs often get screwed and CPs can benefit from CS far in excess of 50% of the costs to support the child(ren).

Just my thoughts of course.

Best regards,

Success is rarely final. Failure is rarely fatal. It is character, courage and consistency of effort that count. Vince Lombardi (with some minor Rags modifications) To each according to their performance, screw Karl Marx. (Rags)

This hits close to home for me. As a full time step parent that pays half of everything, I expect CS go to things like house payments, electric, water, food and child care. Why shouldn't it? If it is going to pay for a roof to put over the child's head, why not?

"If I turn into another, Dig me up from under what is covering the better part of me" -Incubus

DH used to make very good money prior to his industry tanking (aviation). Before he got laid off, he paid BM a ton of $$$ in CS even though we have 50/50. BM's fiancee used to walk around and say that he was happy that DH was buying his/BM's house. Ironically, DH lost his job and found another one that paid way less....now BM has to pay DH CS!!!!! that's karma!

"Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get me"

From my experience with my husband and his child support is that the support goes to provide food, clothing, shelter, etc for the kid. We ran into the problem early on that the BM was not spending the CS money on these items, but would buy tattoos, piercings, cigarettes, movies, a number of things that weren't for SD and then ask me (apparently I'm a sucker) for more money at the end of the month for food or whatever. In my state, we could have requested that she itemize everything she is spending the CS money on because we thought she was not spending it appropriately. We didn't take it that far, although we told the BM that we were going to. She stopped asking us for extra money, but that may have been because she now gets food stamps, LEAP, and section 8 housing....