The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [60]
In either case, activists on behalf of single mothers are probably right in their basic conclusion: Privation could be spread more evenly between men and women. Child support guidelines could be changed to ensure that no man would have a penny more discretionary income than his ex-wife does, and that if one ex-spouse suffers, so does the other. Several family law reformers have embraced what we call the Share-the-Pain model, whose “ultimate goal is for all family members to emerge from a marital breakdown with roughly equal standards of living, so that no one, specifically children and those who care for them, suffers disproportionately from the failure of a marriage.”45 According to this approach, if the mother and children live at twice the poverty rate, then so should the ex-husband.
Fair enough. But the critical question is, how far would these changes get today’s single mother? Would the Share-the-Pain model lift single mothers and their children out of their financial hole? Brad is already paying more than the Share-the-Pain model would call for: Gayle lives at 2.8 times the poverty level, whereas Brad, after paying child support to both his ex-wives, scrapes by at just 1.4 times the poverty level. By this measure, Gayle and her kids are doing much better than her ex-husband, yet she is still bankrupt.
Of course, Brad’s situation is particularly bad because he has two ex-wives to support. What would happen to a more typical dual-income couple if they divorced? If Justin and Kimberly (the typical two-earner couple we met in previous chapters) split up, and the courts followed the Share-the-Pain approach, Justin would be required to pay Kimberly roughly $12,400 a year—close to half his take-home pay.46 Kimberly’s situation would be undeniably better than under current guidelines, since her support checks would increase considerably. But if she wanted to keep the home, the car, the day care, and the health insurance, she would still face a 54 percent drop in discretionary income, even if Justin paid every penny. To be sure, this is better than the 86 percent drop she would experience under the current system.47 The Share-the-Pain model might appeal to our sense of fairness, and it might even be the right response to a bad situation. But even such a drastic change to the child support guidelines is no panacea for the middle-class single mother—and no guarantee of her financial survival.
What if Dad shares custody of the kids? This is an increasingly likely outcome. Approximately one out of six divorcing couples are awarded joint custody.48 Many fathers’ rights groups support the trend, arguing that joint custody is “in the best interest of children [and fosters] a meaningful relationship with both of their parents.”49 But what about the financial impact of these arrangements? Joint custody would free Mom from the overwhelming burden of bearing sole responsibility for all the day-to-day child care requirements, but the overall impact on her financial well-being is more complex. Consider housing. When the Pritchards split up, the only way Brad avoided the bankruptcy courts was to live in the cheapest efficiency apartment he could find. If he had needed to find a home suitable for his three children (preferably near their school), he wouldn’t have had a prayer of making ends meet—or of making support payments to either of his ex-wives. Joint custody effectively