People simultaneously entangled in multiple state systems are often subject to contradictory legal mandates that can foster distrust and incentivize system avoidance. This study focuses on those indebted to both the child support system and the criminal legal system, a situation we describe as dual debt. We ask whether and how the imposition of legal debts with punitive surveillance and collections mechanisms fosters alienation in the form of legal cynicism and estrangement, which we refer to jointly as legal anomie. Drawing from interview data in Minnesota, we find that legal anomie and system avoidance are mutually reinforcing processes, as debts in these systems triggered consequences that pushed people out of the formal labor market and heightened their distrust of legal institutions. The case of dual debt demonstrates how alienating and contradictory policy systems can foster both legal anomie and system avoidance, particularly in the context of economic and social precarity.

Little is known about government policies that regulate economic transfers between separated parents (child support) outside of high-income countries. This paper provides the first broad overview of child support policy and its outcomes in 37 middle- and low-income countries. Using a systematic literature review, we provide information on child support policies in these countries, considering institutional arrangements, procedures for determining how much child support is due and how obligations are enforced. Using descriptive statistics on individual-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study Database, we show that poverty rates are high among lone-mother families and that fewer than one-third of lone mothers receive child support. Among those who receive, however, amounts average over $3,600 US$/year, making child support an important income source for some. We discuss how current policies and their estimated outcomes are similar to (or differ from) the previous work that focused on high-income countries.

With increasing trends in divorce, separation and multi-partner fertility, more families have become subject to child support policies. This paper explores child support receipt in 21 European countries using 2017–2018 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data. We investigated: (1) cross-country differences in the prevalence and amount of child support received and (2) the determinants of child support receipt among lone mothers across countries. We found that the proportion of lone-mother families receiving child support ranged from 16 per cent in Luxembourg to 75 per cent in the Czech Republic, with large variations in the amount of child support received. Our results suggested that the socioeconomic characteristics of lone mothers, including marital status, education, employment status, number of children and income, were associated with the likelihood of receiving child support in most countries but these associations varied significantly across countries.

Increasingly, parents in separated families equally share care of their children post-separation. In this article we extend a well-known family policy model to generate hypotheses about the level of child support to be paid by separated parents when children live primarily with their mother (‘sole custody’) in contrast to when children spend equal time with both parents (‘shared care’). We test these hypotheses with data collected from thirteen countries. In sole custody cases, countries with an earner-carer policy model do have lower child support expectations than countries with a traditional family policy model or a market-oriented model, as predicted. Countries with a traditional family policy model do have the highest orders in the shared case, as predicted. However, there is as much variation within models as there is between, suggesting new analytic frameworks for considering child support in family policy need to be developed.

This article describes the emergence of imprisonment as part of the collection of child-support debt in Alberta, Canada. This approach to child poverty arose in the context of political conservatism, a shift in the feminist movement, and changes in the legal environment. Findings indicate that incarceration for support debt is increasing and that Blacks, Aboriginals, the unemployed, and those without post-secondary education are over-represented among those imprisoned for support debt. It is argued that child-support enforcement as an implement of social policy has limits, especially among low-income payors.