Figure 3.7 Percentage of Paying and Receiving Parents with Legal Representation by Annual Income

Figure 3.7 presents the proportion of paying and receiving parents with legal representation by categorized annual incomes. The proportion of paying parents with legal representation increased as income levels increased. Across the lower income levels, receiving parents more frequently had legal representation than paying parents; however, the proportion of receiving parents with legal representation tended to decrease as income levels increased. It should be noted that the most straightforward cases that would be least likely to involve legal representation for the receiving parents may not be included in this figure. The Guidelines only require the income of receiving parents to be provided in cases when there are special or extraordinary expenses, undue hardship, shared or split custody, or high incomes (over $150,000). When cases falling into one or more of these categories are examined separately, a higher proportion of cases in each recipient parent income level reported legal representation for the recipient parent. For example, among those cases, 85.1 percent of recipient parents in the $1–$14,999 income range reported legal representation; 80.2 percent of recipient parents in the $45,000–$59,000 income range reported legal representation; and 70.5 percent of recipient parents in the $75,000–$149,999 income range reported legal representation. Parents’ income was also analyzed with respect to the disposition of the case (i.e. whether it proceeded by consent/uncontested or was contested). The median income of paying parents in cases resolved by consent/uncontested (n=22,076) was $36,000 (mean=$44,833); in contested cases (n=2,759) the comparable figures were quite similar (median=$37,608; mean=$45,127). The median income for receiving parents in consent/uncontested cases (n=12,915) was $25,586 (mean=$30,639); in contested cases (n=1,596) the median receiving parent income was $23,631 (mean=$26,636).