Step Parent Support

As noted in a previous article, the Family Expense Statute (RCW 26.16.205) has been applied in Washington to hold stepparents equally responsible for the support of stepchildren. Recently, the state supreme court soundly rejected that practice.

On February 26, 1998, the Washington State Supreme Court held that a stepparent's obligation to support his stepchildren ended when they left his home. In Harmon v. DSHS, 951 P. 2d, 770 (Wash. 1998), the high court reversed the lower court's decision to require Mr. Harmon to continue to pay child support for his two step-daughters even though the girls had moved back in with their natural father. In expressly disapproving of this requirement, the state supreme court noted:

the child support schedule and standards set forth in RCW 26.19 govern all child support determinations in this state. RCW 26.16.205, the family expense statute, may not be used as a separate child support statute to hold noncustodial stepparents equally responsible, with the parents, for the support of stepchildren.

In maintaining its position of looking to the stepparent for child support, the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) had argued that: 1). RCW 26.16.205 created a child support obligation on the part of a stepparent that arose when the child began living in the stepparent's home; 2). this obligation is equal to that of the child's natural parents; and 3). said obligation does not end until a court order is entered.

The court disagreed, by finding that the family expense statute is not a child support statute. Instead, the court noted it is a statute that makes both parties to a marriage equally responsible for the necessary expenses of a family. The court explicitly determined that a family "includes stepchildren who are part of the family unit, who reside in the family home, or who are in the residential care of one of the adults in this family unit. It does not include children who are in the primary residential care of the other parent."

As a result, the state supreme court held that Mr. Harmon was not liable for the support of his step-daughters after the lower court had ordered placement of the children to be changed to their father.