Wisconsin shouldn’t do away with a child support system that allows parents to pay percentages of their income, according to a group of family lawyers and judges.
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the agency that oversees child support, is drafting legislation to ban percentage payments and convert them to fixed amounts.
In most of Wisconsin’s child support cases — nearly 125,000– one parent pays the other a specified amount. But in about 66,000 other cases, one parent pays a percentage of income.
Wisconsin is the only state that uses a percentage system. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been pressuring the state for years to dump the system because it makes it difficult for federal auditors to determine if the proper amount of support has been collected.
The state could face cuts and fines amounting to millions of dollars of federal funding if it doesn’t end the system, federal officials have said.
But the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Family Law Section, which represents 1,400 family court lawyers, judges and commissioners around the state, likely will lobby against any changes. The section’s board is set to vote to fight the issue on Feb. 10, said Christopher Walther, immediate past chairman of the section.
Percentage orders work well for parents whose income fluctuates, especially seasonal workers and commission earners, Walther said. The state shouldn’t make changes to make government workers’ auditing jobs easier, he said.
