According to Wisconsin rules, a parent earning more than $84,000 pays 20-40% reduced child support.   Payers in what would probably be considered the middle class pay the full calculation.  Does this make public policy sense?  Is the obligation to support a child somehow different for wealthy parents?    Under this system, the child of a high-earning parent is deprived of income that he/she could otherwise access if the family was intact.  On the other hand, the wealthy parent often is concerned that the child support can be so high that it ends up applied to the other parent’s lifestyle, not the child’s.   A Dane County parent recently argued that he should be permitted to reduce his child support of $15,000 monthly, but the Wisconsin Court of Appeals failed to rule whether this request was consistent with public policy.  http://www.wisbar.org/NewsPublications/Pages/General-Article.aspx?ArticleID=11123.  Hopefully, the Court will review this issue again in the near future.