MAINTENANCE ENFORCEMENT INDEX

The majority of divorced and separated parents, if allowed to fully act as parents in their children’s lives, would gladly provide all possible financial support to those children—exactly as they did before being separated from the other parent. Some would not do so, and consequently legal mechanisms are needed—even stern ones—to force the irresponsible to live up to their responsibilities. Sadly, however, the mechanisms put in place for this purpose have often been guided by stereotypes and blind punitiveness rather than by wisdom and justice. The consequences of this approach have ranged from the merely unjust to the tragic. The purpose of this section is to expose and analyze these injustices. The general discussions (labels beginning with A) and individual case studies (labels beginning with B) below are meant to reveal the problem graphically in hopes of spurring all the needed reforms.