Fact Check

Ten States Ending Child Support in 2015?

Rumor: Ten U.S. states are ending the practice of requiring child support payments.

Published Jan. 12, 2014

Claim:

Claim:   Ten U.S. states will be ending the practice of requiring child support payments.


FALSE


Example:   [Collected via e-mail, June 2014]


Is it true that ten states are ending child support, and if so, which states?

 

Origins:   An item claiming that as of January 2015 ten U.S. states would be ending the requirement for the payment

of child support (supposedly due to too high an incidence of men being forced to pay support for children they had not fathered) was circulated on the Internet beginning in June 2014. However, this rumor has no basis in fact: no law or practice is taking effect in any state in January 2015 that will end the practice of court-directed child support payments.

This hoax was promulgated by a phony ABC News lookalike article posted on Sunday Times Daily, a web site that allowed users to "create your own fake news and trick your friends by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network":


Senators in 10 states including Georgia, South Carolina, and New York have come to the decision to stop child support payments beginning in January of 2015. This decision has come from a petition. There are 65% of fathers paying child support for kids that are not theirs.

 

Viewing the article on the Sunday Times Daily site for more than a few seconds produced a message revealing that it's all just a joke:

Many readers had previously been fooled by similar pranks posted on the same site involving the supposed ending of coupon redemption in the U.S. and the raising of the minimum legal drinking age to 25.

Last updated:   5 June 2015

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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