Post-Separation Parenting and Financial Arrangements: Exploring Changes Over Time

This article presents the findings from a longitudinal, qualitative Australian project, which aimed to identify and explore the longer term financial impacts of shared parenting by examining links between shared parenting and financial (child support, property, and maintenance) arrangements over time. The study involved interviews with 60 separated Victorian parents once a year over 3 years (2009-2011), and our findings are based on 'across time' data for the 56 parents interviewed at Year 3. We found that links between parenting and financial arrangements were not as clear as we had anticipated, either initially or over time. We also found that most parenting arrangements remained unchanged over our study, especially those involving children living with their mother. When parenting arrangements changed, time sharing was more likely to decrease (with a drift towards more time with the mother) than increase. Property arrangements did not change when parenting changed; in contrast, child support payments were more likely to change but were less responsive to parenting changes than we had expected. Whether or not financial support was responsive to parenting changes depended on several factors: the quality of the post-separation relationship, the role of new partners, and parents' level of commitment to their children (including their willingness and capacity to financially support them). Primary time parents (usually mothers) and their children were more financially disadvantaged than minority time parents. Mothers who became primary time parents over time, and their children, were financially disadvantaged if child support payments were not increased and the original property settlement had not favoured them, but the reasons for this were more complicated than we had anticipated. Adapted from the source document.