Are the Child Support Guidelines fair to the access parent?
In 1997, the federal and provincial governments of Canada decided to create a uniform and consistent approach to determining how much child support was to be paid by one parent to the other after they separated. This decision resulted in the creation of the Child Support Guidelines which include tables that set out the exact amount of child support that is to be paid by the access parent to the parent that has custody of the children. The Guidelines’ stated objectives are to establish “a fair standard of support for children that ensures that they continue to benefit from the financial means of both spouses after separation and to reduce conflict and tension between spouses by making the calculation of child support orders more objective.” However, a significant void was left in this law. Specifically, the Guidelines treated all access parents in the same way when in fact there are many different economic consequences to access parents. To illustrate this by way of an example, consider
