Child Support Enforcement: Legislative Tasks for the Early 1980s

In 1934, the American Law Institute's Restatement of the Law of Conflicts characterized support obligations and their enforcement as "of no special interest to other states and since the duty is not im posed primarily for the benefit of an individual, it is not enforceable elsewhere."1 In theory, this notion was laid to rest by the wide spread enactment of the Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Sup port Acts of 1950, 1958, and 1968.2 In practice, however, American law remained deeply insensitive to the enforcement of child support obligations. In the last two decades, several social trends merged to change this situation: increasing rates of divorce, family abandonment, and illegitimacy combined to leave unprecedented numbers of children in single-parent homes, typically without adequate or any support from the other parent.3