Your Honor: Why Am I Here: The Wisconsin Child Support Guidelines in Practice

Background and purpose:

Wisconsin, like all states provides court officials with presumptive child support guidelines to use when setting child support order amounts. Wisconsin’s guidelines are designed to account for an array of factors related to family circumstances, including parents’ financial situations. Wisconsin statute provides factors that could warrant deviation from the guidelines and provides judicial discretion for other factors.

This study aimed to understand the circumstances under which court officials find it appropriate to order a child support amount that differs from the guidelines amount. We explored court officials’ perceptions of the usefulness of the guidelines; when officials follow or deviate from guidelines; and extent to which, and how, factors associated with deviations have changed over time, including the role of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted in three research sites, which varied in sociodemographic characteristics of the overall county population, including household income, poverty educational attainment, and race and ethnicity.

Methods:

The research team collected data through semi-structured interviews (via Zoom) of family court officials within research sites (n=3) and observation of family court proceedings (virtually and in-person, for total of 125 observations resulting in 62 orders established or modified). A racially diverse research team, sharing similar racial, ethnic, and language backgrounds as the participants conducted thematic analysis.

Results:

Court officials described that guidelines help judicial practice, by facilitating consistency and reducing subjectivity, and improving fairness and perceptions of fairness in outcomes. Officials indicated that the guidelines work well in most situations and identified several situations in which they find it appropriate to order an amount that differs from guidelines —in particular, when parents agree to a different amount, when payors have very low or very high incomes, or when payors have orders across multiple families. Our observations of court processes were largely consistent with interviews; in most instances, the amounts court officials ordered aligned with the amounts yielded by the guideline’s formulas. In nearly all cases we observed, orders that were set at amounts that differed from guidelines were set that way with court officials responding to the explicit wishes of parties, or in response to the financial limitations of a struggling payor.

Conclusion and Implications:

Findings highlight the challenges of determining income and order amounts when payors work outside the formal labor market or are self-employed, unemployed, or irregularly employed, as well as the unique considerations for setting orders when children are placed in out-of-home care. Additional guidance related to low-income and self-employed payors, and payors with children placed in out-of-home care, could potentially help support practice and right-sizing of orders. Future research should continue to examine order amount determination for low-income parents, by examining trends and patterns for cases with low or no income information broadly; and undertaking qualitative work with a broader array of court officials and child support system actors to broaden our understanding of order amount determination when income is low.