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State Arkansas:

Parent “A” works full time. Parent “B” is unemployed. “A” and “B” are divorced.

“A” pays $1,000 in child support to “B” monthly. Joint custody, week on week off.

Parent “B” spends $1,000 in the following way: $400 on all monthly household expenses. $600 on monthly rent.

Question: Is Parent “B” allowed to use the child support money to pay for rent? The child only stays in parent “B”’s house half of any month (week on week off). Therefore parent “B” is essentially using $300 to pay for rent while child is not there, and $300 for rent when the child is there. Is this legal?

Also, is parent “B” allowed to use child support money on himself/herself?

If possible are there any links to the official legal sites quoting the law

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    Houses aren't rented week-to-week; if parent B wants to provide a good home for the child during their weeks, they need to pay rent every week. This doesn't seem unreasonable on its face.
    – Cadence
    Commented Feb 10, 2023 at 10:06
  • Does "B" get any financial support / social security payments from the state towards their rent?
    – user35069
    Commented Feb 10, 2023 at 10:59
  • Does "B" have any other income? Keep in mind that money is fungible. So if "B" has some other source of income it becomes hard to say that they are using child support money for something specific. Also: rent is needed to host the child, so paying rent with child support money seems fair to me. Without the child they could rent a smaller and cheaper place so it makes sense to allow that kind of use
    – GACy20
    Commented Feb 10, 2023 at 13:41
  • No other income. It’s 100% clear and “B” admits that “B” uses “A” money to pay “B”’s rent even when the child is not with “B”
    – user49019
    Commented Feb 10, 2023 at 14:04

2 Answers 2

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Is Parent “B” allowed to use the child support money to pay for rent? The child only stays in parent “B”’s house half of any month (week on week off). Therefore parent “B” is essentially using $300 to pay for rent while child is not there, and $300 for rent when the child is there. Is this legal?

Yes.

Also, is parent “B” allowed to use child support money on himself/herself?

Yes.

There are no restrictions on how many paid to a parent for child support may be spent.

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What you describe is completely acceptable

First, one of the goals of child support is to provide a similar standard of living in each household, so spending an amount on rent that happens to be a large portion of the child support amount is understandable.

Second, the fact that the child only spends part of their time at Parent B's home is already accounted for in the computation of the amount owing. Child support in Canada is based almost exclusively on the income of the parents, taking into account the proportion of time the child spends with each parent. And this is all subject to any specific hardships of the paying parent.

Only where a portion of child support is based on a special and extraordinary expenditure (e.g. a specific extracurricular activity, or medical insurance) is it expected the claimant make that specific expenditure. If they stop making that expenditure, then the child support add-on associated with that expenditure is removed.

* I understand the question is directed to Arkansas, but I have provided an answer for those interested in Canadian law, in line with the guidance here ("Even if you supply a jurisdiction tag, we expect and encourage answers dealing with other jurisdictions – while it might not answer your question directly, your question will be here for others who may be from those jurisdictions. If you do this, please tag your answer using the tag markdown: [tag: some-tag]").

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