Oregon Divorce

Oregon is an equitable distribution state. They count a spouse as a homemaker as contribution to the acquiring of assets. This means that the court considers both spouses equally when dividing the property, even if the property is separately held. Custody can be given to either the father or mother depending on several variables. The court considers the conduct, marital status, income, social environment or life style of each. Alimony is determined by the duration of the marriage, the age and health of each spouse, the standard of living in the marriage and the earning capacity of each spouse (Meyer). Child support is also determined by many factors: number of nights the child spends with each parent, gross income, whether or not the parent is receiving spousal support, the child costs, the child's medical and insurance costs are all factors (Mactyre). This could affect single parent mothers negatively because even if they are making an equal or high enough income for the child support to be lower from the father, this means that they are spending a lot of time outside of the home and having a child at home means having to be home a lot, which would lesson the income or make it really hard on the mother without that extra support. 21.7 percent of children in Oregon are in poverty (Oregon) and poverty rates in female-headed households are 3 to 4 times as high as those for the general population (The Barriers for People in Poverty). In 31 percent of cases the fathers don't pay the child support calculated by the Child Support Agency (Nickson). If a father refuses to pay child support they could be refused to obtain a passport, their unemployment compensation would be intercepted, if applicable, their federal and sate income tax refunds would be offset, jail time could be enforced or ti can be taken out of their pay (Wolf).

Though our child support laws are a good start for now, more effort needs to be made in making sure that the father actually pays his support and that it's a fair amount. Since we know that domestic work, household maintenance, child care, and cooking makes up most of the work of a household, especially with children, and we know that women do most of that work, its important to take that into consideration of the amount of time they will have to go to a paid job outside of ALL that. Also since it isn't a two parent setting gender division of labor, the diving of chores between spouses based on their sex, isn't' even an option. So typically the single mother will have to do typical jobs done by the male spouse as well. And we know that because of the wage gap, the gap between average female and male earnings in the work place, gives women a disadvantage in the workplace, that women aren't going to be able to earn as much cash as a single father might be able to. Knowing these factors, from what we've learned in class and the readings this week, we know that women really need to be compensated for the time and work of taking care of a child, doing housework  AND keeping a job of their own. Sending in letters or meeting with important people within state government to talk over these issues would be a start to challenging the legal system of Oregon about these issues. However  it seems Oregon is pretty reasonable with its child support and divorce laws compared to other states.

http://www.partnershiptoendpoverty.org/research/barriers-of-poverty/
http://oregondivorceblog.com/wordpress/2007/05/how-is-child-support-calculated/
http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/statedivorcelaws/a/Oregon_Laws.htm
http://www.separateddads.co.uk/how-many-fathers-dont-pay-child-support.html
http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/bystate/stateprofile.aspx?state=OR
http://singleparents.about.com/od/legalissues/p/deadbeat.htm