As single parents, people who are divorced with children face many struggles. They have less time with their children than they used to, especially if they share custody with their ex-spouse. They have more lessons to teach, more discipline to impart and more necessities to buy with their own paycheck. If a parent has primary custody, child support payments can offset the extra costs. But as most parents who are entitled to this money will tell you, it never seems to be enough, if they get it at all.

A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau seems to confirm this. It found that only 41.2 percent received the full amount of child support they were supposed to get in 2009, a more than 5 percent decrease from two years before. Of the $35.1 billion in child support owed to parents in 2009, they only received 61 percent of that total.

Child support is especially crucial for people living in poverty, according to one of the study's authors. And more and more people are finding themselves below the poverty line as a result of the shortfall in child support payments. The report showed that more than 28 percent of all custodial parents' incomes were below the poverty level -- a 5 percent increase from 2001.

About half of the parents studied had a court order or other agreement to receive payments. About 90 percent of those were legal, as opposed to a formal agreement. But just because a non-custodial parent is court-ordered to pay child support doesn't mean that he or she will dutifully pay it, as police blotters nationwide demonstrate. People are arrested for non-payment of child support on a constant basis. Some say they can't afford it, which isn't surprising. If they were previously part of a family living below the poverty line, chances are good that they'll have trouble making payments after a divorce. Others simply refuse or make the mandatory payments a lower priority than their other expenses.

Parents who aren't getting their payments -- or are having trouble making them -- do have options. An attorney specializing in family law can help parents explore those options and come to an agreement that works for everyone, children included.

Source: Mainstreet.com, "Parents Finding It Harder to Get Full Child Support Payments," Kristin Colella, Dec. 7, 2011