A recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau has revealed that in 2009, 41.2% of custodial parents received the full amount of child support owed them, down from 46.8% in 2007. The proportion of these parents who were owed child support payments and who received any amount at all — either full or partial — declined from 76.3% to 70.8% over the period.
All in all, $35.1 billion in child support was owed in 2009 and 61% of that total was received.
The report focuses on the child support income that the nation's 13.7 million custodial parents reported receiving from non-custodial parents living elsewhere and other types of support, such as health insurance and non-cash assistance. These custodial parents had custody of 22.0 million children under age 21 while the other parent lived somewhere else. Most custodial parents (82.2%) were mothers.
Roughly half (50.6% or 6.9 million) of custodial parents had a court order or some type of agreement to receive financial support from the non-custodial parent. The majority (90.9%) of these parents with agreements were reported as formal legal agreements, while 9.1% were informal agreements or understandings.