Child support payments are meant to cover the expenses related to raising a child. This doesn’t mean that the money is always going to go to the child. In face, there is often not a firm accounting of where child support goes since one parent receives the money from the other parent. This often makes understanding where the payments go a difficult concept.
Oftentimes, child support is simply placed into the household account. This means that the money is comingled with other money coming into the home. Because of this, there usually isn’t a way to say that a specific dollar amount went to the children.
When you look at all the things child support is supposed to cover, you can see that even though it doesn’t go to the child, it does help to pay for things the kid needs. For example, the child needs a place to live so the support might go to the rent or mortgage. It might also go to school expenses, utility payments or extracurricular activity costs. Food, clothing and travel are also covered by these payments.
In almost all cases, the parent who receives the child support will have to put money into raising the child since it is highly unlikely that the payments will cover everything. If a paying parent thinks that the child support is being misused, he or she might need to think about the state of the children. Do they have everything they need? Are they being cared for? If the answer to this is yes, there is a very slim chance that the child support is being misused.
Source: FindLaw, “What Does Child Support Cover?,” accessed June 08, 2018
