Claude Bouchard Books

Well, good old Arnie’s in the news again. Big surprise, Maria Shriver filed for divorce earlier this month and now Arnold’s lawyer is filing petitions to deny child support for sons, Christopher, 13, and Patrick, 17. The couple’s net worth is an estimated $400M and, since there is no pre-nup, they’ll split this 50/50 under California law. The bottom line is, if Arnie doesn’t dish out for his boys, it means two things: 1) Arnold is a cheap bastard and, 2) Chris and Pat won’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, regardless.

I understand the whole legal and moral issue about a father providing his fair share to support his minor children but, in this case, I doubt the boys will have to downgrade from Gucci jeans, even if daddy doesn’t pay his due.

This story is hardly newsworthy but it was right smack on the homepage of my browser this morning. However, I failed to find any articles about the hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty because no child support agreement is in place, or worse, because a parent is not paying the sums foreseen by an agreement. According to a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2009 (link below):

• $34.1 billion was owed in child support in 2007;
• Only 46.8% of custodial parents received all the child support which was due;
• 29.5% received some of the child support money;
• 23.7% received none of the money foreseen by their child support agreement.

So, yeah, I really feel for Arnie’s boys and the financial plight they'll find themselves in if Pops ends up not paying… Really.

http://singleparents.about.com/od/statebystateresources/p/child_support_statistics.htm