By Amy Lindholm, Management Analyst, SCAO Friend of the Court Bureau (FOCB)
You can watch the webinar recordings online:
- September 24, 2020: Fathers on Child Support: I Matter Too
- July 15, 2021: What Mothers Really Think about Child Support
- July 29, 2021: Real Talk from Both Sides: Mothers and Fathers Share Friend of the Court Experiences
Echoing themes of the 2020 Fathers panel, both 2021 parent panels emphasized:
- that parents need more education about how child support and court processes work; and
- a desire for more personalized service delivery.
New themes from this year’s panels included:
- some parents – even mothers – wanting to avoid child support because it can be such a source of conflict in parental relationships;
- a desire for more services focused on building or repairing a coparenting relationship; and
- not enough service emphasis on long-term needs and stability of whole families to best serve children.
Parent Education about Child Support
It is hardly newsworthy to anyone who works in child support
that many people are confused about how exactly things work in our program. At
the end of the session with mothers, someone from the audience asked which the
panelists thought was the highest priority focus for friend of the court:
mediation at the beginning of every case; education at the beginning of every
case; or implicit and explicit bias training? The youngest mother, who has
avoided child support services despite being eligible, advocated for education
first, saying, “With knowledge of what I’m getting into, I’m empowered with my
choice.” She added that to deliver the educational information, we need to
consider “radical change” in our communication strategy and start using social
media like Facebook and YouTube.
At one point during the mothers session, Shon Hart
transitioned with an anecdote about how he misunderstand for a long time that
paying child support and exercising parenting time were tied together. He
thought if a parent was not paying, then the other parent had every right to
withhold the child – regardless of a parenting time court order – as well as
the reverse. Hart explained that he only learned that the two issues operate
independently because he has worked closely with the Genesee County Friend of
the Court.
One of the mothers raised another common cause of confusion:
the Michigan Child Support Formula. She said that initially when her children’s
father started paying child support, he thought the amount was too high, and
that it was unfair to him. Years later when child support was modified, she was
earning a lot more, and her child support decreased, which she then felt was
unfair, but said, “I still don’t understand the formula. I’ll be honest. I just
don’t.”
To consider the parents’ feedback in providing better public
education on these topics, we need to start considering how to bring
information to people where they access
information.
More Personalized Service Delivery
Parents in the panels this year and in 2020 have acknowledged
the difficulty of child support case management, especially because of large
caseloads. Nevertheless, they expressed feeling unimportant and misunderstood.
One father said, “You’re not a person, you’re a file number.”
Cole Williams asked parents to talk about the narrative they
may have heard about “good parent versus bad parent.” Two of the parents – one a
mother and one a father – replied that it’s always assumed the mother is good
and the father is bad. Another father offered a different take and said he
doesn’t believe there are “bad parents,” but there is lack of experience,
knowledge, and resources. “You only do what you know,” he said.
To summarize suggestions about service delivery, continuing
training and work on correcting for bias could help child support professionals
grow in this area. In correcting for bias, you are inherently seeking to
understand people as individuals, treating each case differently, and leading
with a level of empathy (not sympathy).
Child Support: A Source of Conflict
Shon Hart asked mothers, “When you think of the friend of the court, what’s the first thing that you think of?” The responses varied, and included:
- “Historically, I would think, it’s an unfair process. And sometimes it’s an unfair process for both parties. It’s not a positive reaction when I think about it; …it’s not all the way negative.” This mother also said, “He was always mad at me - never wanted to do anything extra - because of what he was paying in child support.”
- “This could be help to me, but it could also be a hindrance to the other party.” This mother was not concerned about her own financial stability because she is doing well. “It doesn’t feel like you’re doing something good. It doesn’t feel bad, but it’s like, they’re so close – neck and neck – the good and the bad are neck and neck, so it cancels each other out.”
- “Truthfully, I skipped [the child support] process in my divorce. But they wouldn’t give me a court date unless I got it. And I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t want to feel like I was trying to be spiteful; I didn’t want to be guilty; I didn’t want that to be a problem for him being in my kids’ life.” She clarified, saying, “I saw the negativity that a lot of men had towards it, and I just didn’t want that to be my experience with my kids’ father.”
These three mothers each answered an open question about
reactions to hearing “friend of the court” with negative connotations
associated with child support. Although that was the initial reaction, two of
the three mothers currently receive child support, and one mother later
described in detail how child support is helpful to her and allows her to
provide a better quality of life for her children.
The perspectives presented here do not speak for ALL mothers
or all people who are eligible to receive child support. With that in mind, it
is important for those working within the program to recognize that child
support can sometimes negatively affect relationships and consider how we can
mitigate negative impacts.
Services to Repair Relationships
One of the mothers shared a heartfelt story highlighting the
impact of parental conflict on her child. She said that in the first two years
of her daughter’s life, she would get mad at the father sometimes and withhold their
child. When their daughter was three years old, the parents were talking on the
phone, and the daughter asked, “Mom, are you talking to my dad?” They had been
arguing really intensely. “Whooo!” she said. “That right there hurt my heart.
She knew the only time I got mad was when I was speaking to her dad. And I
didn’t want her to see that, right? That’s not cool. So I made a point – from
that point forward – that we were going to parent, and
this was about my daughter.”
This mother, who also works with other parents in her
professional role, went on to say, “Once we focus on our child, our relationship
gets better as coparents,” and emphasized that, “It’s abnormal
not to be able to get along for the well being of the child.”
Most friend of the court offices offer a program to parents
with a new case, often the SMILE program
(Start Making It Liveable for Everyone), that provides some education about
coparenting. Some offices may have additional services they provide throughout
the life of a case or partner with other agencies in their community. The 2021
panels clearly want to see more services like this, or where they are already
available, increased advertising of these programs.
Services Focused on Long-term Well Being of the
Child
While the parents did spend the majority of the time
discussing their pain points and imagining how child support could work
differently, they also highlighted positives. Both mothers and fathers talked
about the consistency of financial support for the child when the child support
agency is involved. One of the mothers explained that she can afford tutoring
when her child falls behind in a subject because of the
child support the father pays her.
Going back to the father who mentioned that some parents have
lack of experience, knowledge, and resources, parents who owe child support are
not always able to pay. One of the mothers coined the phrase: “Dollars don’t
make dads.” All three of the parent panels talked about children needing more
from parents than financial support but feeling that the child support program
expects nothing more of the “noncustodial parent.” Cole Williams highlighted
that other services provided by the friend of the court might be overlooked or
never discovered by parents because of the negative association with child
support enforcement.
Moving Forward
We are grateful to the parents who bravely and generously
took time out of their day to share their personal stories and highlight these
themes to help all of us in the child support field to hear a different
perspective – and perhaps ‘reimagine’ how we provide services.
We have received many requests for additional parent panel
conversations and hope to soon be able to highlight more parent voices in this
way.
Amy Lindholm holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kalamazoo College and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Grand Valley State University. She came to the State Court Administrative Office’s Friend of the Court Bureau after managing a small international development non-profit agency and previously working in a friend of the court office for five years.
