Mothers Rights in Relations to Child Support

Mothers Rights
Courts have long realized the role of mothers as primary caregivers to their children and yet, earlier on in the 20th century, the father was always the natural choice and was automatically awarded the care and custody of his child. Despite the fact that this practice is long past, in order to obtain a fair custody hearing and sufficient and appropriate visitation rights, it is essential that parents are particularly pro-active when it comes to fighting for the custody of their children. When it comes to Mothers rights a Mother can’t afford to sit back and automatically assume they will be awarded the care and control of their children. 

Awarding the custody of a child to one or other of the parents is going to affect the child, one way or another, for the rest of their formative years. When a mother wins custody, she is more likely to be in a situation where suitable child support is paramount for the welfare of the child: despite many mothers now holding down full-time jobs, the high cost of good child-care eats into too much of their salaries, often leaving single mothers struggling to meet all the household bills, often surviving close to the breadline. 

Mothers Rights Enforcement Program
Suitable and sufficient child support has been recognized, throughout the USA, as being an essential factor in bringing up a child as a single parent. Adequate child support has been recognized as being so important that every single state recognize the Child Support Enforcement Program as a national factor for ensuring the self-sufficiency and well-being of children residing with single parents. The Child Support Enforcement Program is, in fact, run as a partnership between local authorities, the state and federal resources.  Non-custodial parents – usually the father – is located by the Department of Revenue who is usually responsible for administering the Child Support Enforcement Program and, when found, the errant parent is issued with an order for support. If necessary they arrange for paternity tests to be carried out. Once an Order for payment has been made, child support is collected by the CSEP, with the child support payment being passed on to the single-parent family concerned. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the system, absent parents are traced and they are made to pay support for their child or children. To date, the Department of Revenue has 17 million families on their case files – for which they collect $18 billion in child support. 

Mothers Rights Support Services
When it comes to Mothers rights all single mothers are entitled to Child Support services. For those families who are supported by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF] Program, Child Support services are mandatory and provided automatically. Any child support that is collected is appropriated in order to reimburse payments made under the TANF program. Families not in receipt of public support by way of TANF are free to apply for Child Support services’ assistance, although this is not a mandatory requirement. If child support payments are collected on behalf of families not relying on public assistance, the full amount of money received is sent on to the family. 

Mothers Rights Project Get Connected
Each individual state runs its own Child Support Agency which is responsible for everyday administration of the Child Support service. They can be contacted through their website. There is also an internet site run by the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement: this site is an invaluable source of information for mothers to find out what their rights are in relation to child support laws. According to the Child Support Report, Vol. 31, No 12, December 2009, the state of Washington has introduced: “….clear and accessible services adapted to our individual customer needs”. As part of their Child Support Program Washington State has introduced their ‘2009 – 2013 Strategic Plan’ – Project Get Connected - with a range of initiatives designed to support their various goals.   The intention of Project Get Connected is to introduce mothers, who are supporting their children as single parents, with appropriate employment-related services. Funding was initially provided by OCSE in November 2008.

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