Are There More Successful Ways To Obtain Support Payments?
Moiety conducted a private survey on this topic. Here’s what we found.
It’s no secret that many ex-spouses consider the process of requesting and paying support money extremely stressful. While stipulation agreements, divorce decrees and other court orders govern what should / must be paid, it’s just not that simple.
Not all support payments are fixed at the same amount each month and not all co-parenting tools are all encompassing, completely automated and affordable to use (at least not yet, we’re working on it).
There are still variables that remain in co-parenting payments, such as shared miscellaneous child expenses that require regular communication, negotiation, agreement and eventually (hopefully), the successful movement of money between co-parents.
Choose the Nuclear Option?
Regularly engaging with a lawyer, obtaining a court order, or applying maintenance enforcement programs when miscellaneous payments are delayed or inconsistent, are impossibly time consuming and often overly expensive ventures.
So, co-parents still need to ‘work things out between themselves.’ If there is regular disagreement or apathy towards miscellaneous support payments, it can become a true exercise in emotional and financial stamina for both parties.
About The Survey
We conducted a survey with co-parents who make support payment requests and those who receive requests / make payments. The survey focused on participants from the United States, where the divorce rate is around 50%. The gender, income, and education of the survey participants is considered ‘diverse’.
We wanted to determine if there was a cause-effect relationship from the frequency, tone, and method of payment request from one ex-spouse to the turnaround time of response and success of payment from the other ex-spouse.
Every co-parent situation is different. We know that emotions such as resentment and anger can consume the entire relationship, making any kind of communication or co-operation, very difficult.
Even so, our survey suggests that certain factors relating to the frequency, tone and method of requesting money from an ex-spouse could have a notable impact on the reliability, speed at which a spouse sends the payment – even perhaps determines if payments are made at all.
Survey Questions and Answers
Here is a list of selected questions and answers in our survey that we want to share.
Perhaps this insight can help you, a friend or a relative who is seeking more success in obtaining co-operation in coordinating support payments:
1. We asked ex-spouses who receive support payment requests, how frequently did they receive these requests.
Click here for the response
Half of the respondents indicated that they receive requests ‘often’ (more than once a month). Too many requests can potentially annoy an ex-spouse, creating conflict.
2. We then asked the paying spouse to rate the quality of communication regarding child expense payments.
Click here for the response
Half of the respondents said that the communication is ‘inefficient’ to ‘completely disorganized’.
3. We then asked the paying spouse to rate the tone of communication regarding child expense payments.
Click here for the response
Again, half of the respondents said that the tone of communication is ‘confrontational’ to ‘high conflict’.
4. We then asked the paying spouse if the frequency of payment requests were reduced, would it have a positive impact on his/her responses.
Click here for the response
Once again, half of the respondents said that changing the frequency of requests or changing the tone of communication could have a positive impact on responses (and payments).
The Top 4 Changes That Could Positively Impact Your Ex’s Responses and Payments
Finally, we asked our participants to rank which changes they would like to see most when communicating support payment requests.
Here are the responses:
4. Use more automated tools (web-sites, apps, etc..)
3. Use a single method of communication (either text, or e mail, etc.., but not both).
2. More concise communication. Get to the point.
The number 1 response, that could positively impact communication between co-parents is (by a wide margin)
1. Politeness. Saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ more.
And the number 1 emoji to use periodically to make a positive impact on communication:
Using the ‘please’ or ‘prayer’ icon periodically can send a message to your ex-spouse that you are sincere in your effort to be more polite.
Our Final Thoughts
Until the world is taken over by robots, or when Elon Musk enables us to become unemotional enhanced-human cyborgs, it’s important to understand that we, humans are still very much influenced by our emotions. Our decision making process involves a complex mix of logic, values and yes – how we feel about it.
As difficult as it is sometimes to communicate with your spouse, changing to a consistently polite tone, may have a potentially seriously positive impact on the response and the desired result.
In that same spirit, we’d like to end by saying ‘thank you’ to all of the Moiety App users and external parties who participated in this study.
That’s all for now
If you have any questions or want to make suggestions on Moiety, feel free to send an anonymous comment at the bottom of this page, or drop us a note at support@moietyapp.com. We’re here.
-The Moiety Team.
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