Bruce Dalpra has a simple way of explaining how the economy shapes the daily routine in his courtroom.

"In good times, we divide up assets," said Dalpra, a marital master in Hillsborough County. "In bad times, we divide up liabilities."

No extra credit for guessing what gets divvied up more often nowadays.

The recent economic downturn has increased pressure on the state's family court system, particularly in cases dealing with child custody. Mounting job losses and wage cuts have pushed more and more people - almost always fathers - to seek reductions in their monthly child support payments. At the same time, the parents receiving the support - usually the mothers - are often grappling with tighter personal finances of their own. Dalpra and others with a front-row seat on the system describe a domino effect that increases the financial stress on everyone involved.

"When you order someone to make payments according to what the state guidelines require, and you see what his income is, sometimes I scratch my head and say, 'I don't know how this fella is going to do it,' " Dalpra said last week in his Manchester office. "Then I look at the other side of the coin and ask how the person receiving the child support will get by on less money."

State guidelines determine a person's child support obligation based on his or her income. A father will usually end up paying about 25 percent of his net income for one child, 33 percent for two children and nearly 50 percent for four or more children. They are also required to contribute money toward medical and child-care expenses.

Statistics alone illustrate the toll the recession has taken on the state's child support system.

Overall support collections at the end of 2008 were down 3 percent compared with a year earlier, as more fathers seek reductions in their monthly support obligations. And the amount of collections garnished from unemployment checks rather than paychecks has risen sharply - up more than 90 percent over last year. The amount of child support payments diverted from unemployment wages is still a small fraction of the overall amount. But it's a sure indicator of the financial trouble more fathers are experiencing.

"It's coming from both job losses and reduced wages," said Mary Weatherill, head of the state Division of Child Support Services. "At the same time, the family on the other end is still in need of the same level of support. It's a push-pull situation, with all parties being affected."

The economic strain is also evident in other family court cases, such as divorces. Already pressed by the stress of a dissolving marriage, couples are grappling with the financial strains of trying to sell a house worth less than what they owe on it, dividing up a retirement account that's lost half its value in the last year, or negotiating how to split up mountains of credit card debt. Foreclosures and personal bankruptcies are also pushing many couples into divorce court, as previously hidden fault lines emerge under the emotional strain. Conversely, a divorce may precipitate a bankruptcy filing or foreclosure.

"There's a lot more desperation, which makes tensions here a little higher," said Dalpra, who's worked as a marital master in various state courts for 18 years. "There's always tensions, but they seem to get ramped up when there are fewer resources between the parties."

Feeling the strain

Those involved in the system say the strain is worse in the superior courts in Hillsborough County, two of a small handful of districts that don't have distinct courts for family matters. On a morning last week, 24 cases were scheduled for Dalpra's courtroom, a windowless room with undecorated cinderblock walls in the basement of the Hillsborough County Superior Court North in Manchester. Six cases involved fathers seeking to reduce child support payments because of financial trouble. Others were brought by state officials looking to enforce orders against parents who had missed payments.

The setting does not offer much privacy. In the hallway, lawyers shuttled between mothers and fathers, negotiating changes to child support deals. At one point, a convict wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, handcuffs and ankle chains was escorted through the waiting area on his way to a hearing in the criminal court upstairs.

Dalpra, with his round face and quiet manner, is a calming figure in these proceedings. Whether reassuring a weeping parent or telling another to stop interrupting him, his tone rarely rises from a soft-spoken middle range. When one father threw up his hands in frustration with the court system, Dalpra asked one of his clerks to fetch the man a phone number for New Hampshire Legal Assistance.

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