Can I trade Child Support for Parenting Time?

The question is, can one parent essentially trade child support for parenting time? Often time we get asked a question of if I give up my parenting time, or maybe one parent offers to not have the other parent pay if they agree not to see the child, or something along those lines. Have you ever come across a situation like that, and what’s your experience with it?

This can come up in two different ways, and it comes up all the time. You have it come up in the context of severance. You will have non-custodial parents … more often than not, it’s been the father, but that’s just because mothers from a statistical standpoint are the primary custodians more often … they’ll say, “Hey, I will sever my rights. I will agree to have my rights severed if you don’t charge me child support.” In Arizona, you can’t sever your rights voluntarily unless there’s someone else ready, willing, and able to adopt the child. So, that’s not going to work, but when I was with the Attorney General’s office I would hear that all the time. People would get served with child support paperwork, enforcement paperwork, and they would say, “Hey, you know what? Where do I sign? I haven’t had contact with this child in years, I’ll just sever my rights so I don’t owe any money.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

The other context isn’t severance, it’s just parenting time. What’s commonly known as visitation. The parties, who obviously don’t hold each other in very high regard, will sit and say, “You know what? You agree not to see the child, I’ll agree to not take any child support from you.” The problem with that is that the child support is essentially for the child. It’s the benefit of the child. Really, these are parents making decisions with their own best interests in mind, not necessarily the best interests of the child.

Generally speaking, these sorts of deals are not going to be condoned by the court. The law of the State of Arizona is that every parent has a duty to support their child. To overcome that duty is a very, very high burden even if the person who has primary custody doesn’t quote/unquote “need” the money. It isn’t about whether they need the money, it’s for the child. The courts will often say, “Well, if you don’t want to use, don’t use it. Just put it in an account. Save it for the child when they get older, college account, that sort of thing.” The seminal case on this goes back to 1990. What it said is the parties can make these sort of arrangements, but they’re not binding on the court. If they come to court and say, “We’ve made this deal, we want you to approve it. Stop the child support. Change the parenting time to zero days.” The court is not often going to take that, because they’re going to find that that agreement is not in the child’s best interest.