It is essential to ensure that children do not suffer financially even if their parents are divorced.
The Supreme Court's Legal Training and Research Institute of Japan has released new guidelines for determining the amount of child support to be paid after a divorce, after reexamining the old guidelines. Under the new guidelines, it is said the monthly value of child support will increase in many cases by 10,000 yen to 20,000, yen as a result of taking into consideration changes in trends in household expenditures.
There is no law that specifies how to determine the amount of child support. When couples fail to reach an agreement through talks, the guidelines are used in such situations as mediation in family courts. The amount of child support is determined by applying such factors as the annual income of a couple and the number of children to a standard calculation table.
The old guidelines, which were released in 2003, had been criticized as not reflecting actual livelihoods because the statistical data used for compiling the guidelines had not been updated. The review of the old guidelines can be regarded as reasonable.
Doubt remains, however, about why the same standards were in place for more than 16 years. It is necessary to reexamine guidelines at a frequency of about once every few years to be able to flexibly respond to changes in social conditions.
The Japan Federation of Bar Associations proposed its own calculation standards intended to increase the amount of child support to be received, contending that "the values of child support were set at low levels." When the guidelines are reviewed by courts in the future, opinions should be widely heard from parties including the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, bar associations and experts.
A matter of concern is that nonpayment of child support has become conspicuous.
According to a 2016 survey conducted by the welfare ministry, only 24% of single-mother households received child support. Nonpayment of child support cannot be overlooked, as it is directly linked to the issue of child poverty.
Some people divorce without talking in detail about the amount of child support because they do not want to associate with the partner they are leaving. The Civil Code calls for determining the amount of child support through consultative negotiations at the time of a divorce. It is indispensable to widen the public's understanding of this legal arrangement.
Under the revised Civil Execution Law that will be enforced next spring, courts will be empowered to order municipal governments and financial institutions to provide information on the names of companies that employ people who are refusing to pay child support, as well as information on their bank accounts. This will make it easier to seize divorced partners' assets, including salaries.
The municipal government of Akashi city in Hyogo Prefecture has established a system to pay up to a yearly amount of 600,000 yen to single parents who cannot receive child support, to be paid back by their divorced partners. The Osaka municipal government subsidizes expenses for the production of notarized documents that determine the amount of child support. These can be said to be noticeable support measures taken by municipalities.
In Europe and the United States, there are systems in which central and state governments pay child support to be paid back by nonpaying ex-partners, and child support payments can be collected forcibly. It is advisable for Japan to study these systems as a government policy of not permitting nonpayment.
-- This article appeared in the print version of The Yomiuri Shimbun on Dec. 30, 2019.
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