Can you control what the custodial parent does with the child support money?

Does the mom have to actually use the money to support the kids? After all, the amounts of support ordered pursuant to the chart can seem well in excess of the cost of the children's needs, and we all can picture situations in which, although the kids aren't starving or neglected, mom also has a nice new wardrobe courtesy of the support money. In general, courts presume that the party receiving child support spends the money to support the children, and the burden is on you to prove otherwise. Because just about everyone paying support complains of paying "too much," judges have a tendency to take a cynical view of parties coming into court with this kind of an issue. Further, it is difficult to prove that expenditures do not benefit the children. For instance, if mom buys a nice new house and uses some support money for it, that would benefit the kids even if it benefits mom more. As a result, it takes fairly direct evidence to get the party receiving support in trouble for not using it properly. Some states have statutes that can require the recipient of support to provide the payor with an accounting of where the support money went; it is difficult, however, to convince a judge to actually make this happen.