More on child support liability

At my request, this is further information from the author of a piece I referred to from menz.org.nz

Child Support and Paternity

The whole area is full of vagueness and uncertainty but it basically goes like this.

If a supposed father is named by the mother, IRD will send a demand to the father. He has 28 days to file an objection to the demand. If he does not file an objection within 28 days he is assumed to be the father and then it becomes almost impossible to change anything after that.

If the father does get to file his objection within 28 days, and his name is not on the child’s birth certificate, he should be able to get off paying child support. If his name is not on the birth certificate and he misses the 28 day objection deadline, he will almost certainly never get off paying child support.

In odd cases men who are not the fathers, but have been trapped, have managed to prove they are not the father and get off paying child support, but we have seen that take years and many court appearances by the father.

Now the real rub. In a large number of cases, at the start, IRD don’t have the supposed father’s address, or they are given the wrong address (surprise, surprise). So the father never gets the IRD demand before the 28 day objection period expires. So regardless of whether or not his name is on the birth certificate, he has to pay. This works very much in IRD’s favour (they are tasked with collecting as much revenue as they can), so IRD don’t have any incentive to get the father’s address right. What’s more, IRD calculate the amount the Child Support the father (who has not responded) has to pay, and they tend to assess the father for the maximum amount. So he starts off with huge Child Support bills and quickly runs up huge penalties as he is unable to pay the huge amount of Child Support demanded.