Child support is an obligation that a parent with no custody must make towards a parent who has custody for the ongoing well being of a child that has been the result of a broken relationship or marriage. These arrangements are normally done in a court of law, as the follow up to a divorce, dissolution, marital separation and might include alimony.



The whole child support system relies on the obligation of one parent to support the child even if he or she isn't part of a couple any more and the child isn't living with both of the parties involved. When a split is involved the non custodian parent gains visitation rights and must also pay a fixed amount of money for the purpose of raising the child. Both parents must participate in their child development and the usage of money for that purpose is strictly tied to both parents, in such a manner that if one doesn't pay for child care the other doesn't too.

Different countries deal with this fact in different ways, whereas in some countries the court decides the sums of money and the arrangements in others the parents directly discuss the matter and solve all of the aspects involved between them, not involving any form of law or court.

Problems might occur when setting the ums of money involved because many of the parents cannot simply pay the amounts of money that have been settled in court. These are usually men and are called "deadbeats" and there are a lot of non custodial parents that refuse to pay child support for various reasons: unable to pay due to the lack of money, claims that the money isn't spent properly, denial of parenthood or the simple refusal to pay. Punishments have been issued for these cases and in most countries that punishment involves suspending an important legal document of the parent ( driver license, ID card?and so on ) ,and can go as far as retracting rights, huge fines, the deduction of money from salaries , tax increase and even jail.

Many people in the world owe a lot to the child support agencies and many try to elude the grip of the law but new and more effective methods are devised to catch these people, although many of them have claimed that the practice of forcefully detracting money from bank accounts and salaries is immoral and unconstitutional.

Like any other depth if the custodial parent chooses to forgive the depth that the other part has the debt goes directly to the state where it can be overlooked to, which is the case most times custodial parents choose to do this. Unfortunately many non custodial parents get used o this practice and completely ignore child support.