If you're married/kids it usually happens by 35. If you reach 'enlightenment' after that you can't cut back easily (wife and kids accustomed,even maybe feel entitled to expensive private school etc etc), and if you do your family will often simply divorce you then the judge will impute your income for CS and alimony at the high amount you made before. If you scale back, they put you in a jail cell, take away your licenses, your property, and revoke your passport.
Child support is nearly universally enforced at least on paper. The incentive is to divorce quickly after a high earner scales back to lock in the high imputed income. You see sky high divorces in recently unemployed persons as spouses scramble to lock in CS and alimony against their recent earnings.
These are the acts of calculated actors getting in on the take as incomes reduce, to lock in the income stream.
Studies such as this for example show highly elevated divorce risk after forms of layoff or termination.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-020-09506-x
Wouldn’t that most likely be due to the increased stress on the relationship of reduced income?
Not to judge too much, but that sounds more like the outcome of a crappy relationship rather than a universal experience.
Not exactly related, but ... I will admit, I'm occasionally mind-boggled by family court. Male rape victims have been made to pay child support because its not the child's fault that his mother was a criminal.[1][2]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_fatherhood#United_State...