FYI

Start here: pick your state and see its whole child-support and custody reference in one place — the estimator, how the guideline is designed, when support ends, interest on unpaid support, and the custody best-interest factors — each linking to the full, sourced detail.

Interactive map of family-court reform across all 50 states and DC. Pick a reform - an equal parenting time presumption, deployed-parent custody protection - and see where it is already law, where a bill is pending, and where nothing has been introduced. Each status cites the statute or the bill.

The legislative committees that oversee child welfare, the state children-and-families agency, and child support in all 50 states and DC. Current membership and official office phone, email, or web form, each copied from that legislature's own site. A site that blocked the fetch is listed as blocked.

What policymakers, agency heads, judges and researchers have said about what Title IV-D child support is for - cost recovery, incentive payments, arrears, enforcement - in quotes and video. Each quote is labelled Verified, Paraphrase or Attributed - unverified, and each clip opens at the moment it is said.

A sourced explainer on the incentive structures in family law: billing and retainers, case cost and duration, custody evaluators and other court-ordered services, process tactics and the rules against them, effects on children, and reforms. Every factual sentence cites a public source; advocate claims and missing evidence are labelled.

What the law actually says about a parent's right to raise their own child: the U.S. Supreme Court line from Meyer to Troxel, the federal statutes behind state intervention, and a state-by-state survey of the fit-parent presumption, whether parents can agree without a judge, and whether one parent can bill the other for a cost they never agreed to. Every citation checked against the primary source, contrary authority included.

Multi-state child-support estimator and other guideline calculators. Compare how different states would treat the same income — no login needed.

How the child-support (IV-D) system is funded, what research says about the cost of raising children, the constitutional right to parent, and equal-shared-parenting background.

A searchable library of court, government, and academic reference documents — child-support guideline models, the economic cost of raising children, federal enforcement, income imputation, and a self-represented appellate-procedure guide. Search runs across the full text of every document. Sourced and attributed; not legal advice.

Which states tie child support to the measured cost of raising a child (Betson–Rothbarth / USDA) versus a flat percentage of income, and which states’ equal-income 50/50 placement yields no support. A searchable, filterable, sourced state-by-state comparison.

Fifty years of U.S. fertility, marriage, and single-father trends charted against Wisconsin’s child-support award levels and independent estimates (USDA, Comanor) of what a child actually costs — with a careful, cited look at what the evidence does and does not show about support and family formation.

The only two ways a Title IV-D child-support agency gets involved (public-assistance assignment vs. a voluntary application), why the agency represents the state and not you, how administrative enforcement works, and where procedural due process draws the line — including Turner v. Rogers on jail for nonpayment. Cited to statute, the CFR, and case law.

How federal child-support enforcement was built over five statutes (1975 Title IV-D → 1988 presumptive guidelines → 1996 PRWORA → 2005 DRA), why numeric guidelines became mandatory (welfare cost-recovery), where Wisconsin’s percentage formula came from (UW-Madison IRP), and what the program’s own numbers show — charted and cited to CRS/OCSE primary sources.

The age a child-support obligation runs to in every state — base age of majority, the high-school-enrollment extension, disability provisions, and whether a court can order college support — each with the controlling statute. Searchable and filterable.

The statutory “best interest of the child” factors a court and Guardian ad Litem weigh in a custody case — pick your state to see them quoted verbatim from the controlling statute, with citations and what is at stake if a factor goes unaddressed. Verified for 50 states.

Whether each state charges interest on past-due (arrears) child support — yes, no, or at the court’s discretion — with the rate and the controlling statute. Unpaid balances can grow fast where interest accrues. Searchable and filterable.

A sortable, sourced table of well-documented high-earner cases — state, number of children, custody arrangement, and the legal basis (high-earner deviations, guideline caps, imputed income). Educational, not a benchmark.

The statutory best-interest-of-the-child factors a Guardian ad Litem evaluates, quoted verbatim from the statute, with links to the source law.

A searchable Child Welfare Information Gateway guide explaining how courts define and weigh the best interests of the child across states and territories.

The constitutional right of fit parents to direct their child’s upbringing (Troxel, Meyer, Pierce), what parents can settle privately, how to make an agreement enforceable, and the limits courts keep to protect the child. Sourced, neutral, not legal advice.

Separates legal parentage, birth-record and intestate-inheritance interests, support, custody, and placement—then shows how to test a claim that litigation was “only for the child’s rights” against the relief requested, mediation record, and parenting proposals. Parent-neutral and source-verified.

Neutral, sourced overview: parental care generally ranks above third-party care when a fit parent can provide it; treating daycare as a pure cost/convenience utility can fuel co-parent animosity. Peer-reviewed citations; no parenting score.

What a contested custody/support case actually costs when parents can’t agree — attorney, GAL, evaluator, deposition, transcript, and appeal figures, with per-parent and 18-year cumulative ranges. Sourced ranges, not a prediction.

A transparent $400-per-hour planning model compares attorney, mediation, GAL, and Wisconsin court costs with USDA and Brookings child-rearing estimates. Published figures and modeled arithmetic are labeled separately.

Child support paid over 18 years compared with the USDA/Betson-Rothbarth cost of raising a child, the economic studies states are supposed to use, and the documented Title IV-D incentive structure (with the critique attributed and counterpoints). Educational, neutral.

Where applying for TANF/Medicaid conditions benefits on assigning support and cooperating (42 U.S.C. § 608), what the 14th and 1st Amendments actually say (Turner v. Rogers, Blessing, Bowen, Wyman, Troxel — all CourtListener-verified), and where states go beyond the federal floor. Neutral; the conditions attach to a voluntary benefit, not to child support itself.

A directory of external parent-resource links from independent advocates and shared-parenting organizations (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok). Listed for convenience and clearly labeled — not endorsed or vetted by BMD, which stays neutral and child-centered.