Through these assumptions, the discussion abstracts from other relevant considerations as the best interest of the child, gender-justice considerations, various confounding contingencies and the obstacles for legal implementation. Shouldn’t we lean the allocation of property and support in favor of the non-residential parent, as a counterbalance? In order to evaluate this suggestion, the paper first undertakes a long list of simplifying assumptions, attempting to provide the best possible defense for such line of argument. Yet caregiving might be regarded as a benefit rather than a burden, at least when both parents genuinely desire to provide caregiving. Current legal schemes of allocation either ignore the allocation of caregiving while distributing property and support duties or alternatively take the allocation of custody into account by seeing it as an extra burden inflicted on the custodian, hence seeing the custodian as entitled to exemption from the duty of support or even to a bigger share in the marital financial resources. Also requiring allocation is the right and duty to take ongoing care of one’s children.

These allocations, sometimes made by courts and sometimes through private negotiation, are better to be fair. When families dissolve, familial burdens and benefits as marital property and the burden of child support should be distributed.

Betson large figures