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Child Support: Will quitting your job make things better?

You have been off to Court and the Justice has ordered that you pay child support to your soon-to-be former spouse. You do not mind supporting your children but you disagree with the amount of child support that you have been ordered to pay.   You keep hearing the words “Child Support Guidelines” and you know that the amount of child support you have been ordered to pay relates directly to the amount of income you are earning. You wonder if it would help to quit your high paying job for something slightly less ambitious. Should you quit?

Quitting your job in the face of a child support order to undermine or avoid your support obligations will not make things better – unless you like digging in deep holes that you cannot get out of.

The Federal Child Support Guidelines allow the Court to assume that the payor is making more income than he or she is actually making for the purpose of calculating child support, if the Court finds that the payor is intentionally under-employed or unemployed. 

The intention of the payor appears to be the key as to whether the Courts will assume the payor should be earning more income. Here are some examples (and these examples are based on true Court cases): 

1. A mother moved from the Northwest Territories to the Maritimes.  Her income went from $30,000.00 to $23,000.00 per year.  The mother’s new employment involved operating a pizza franchise with her new partner. The father of the children argued at Court that the mother deliberately chose an entrepreneurial path and was intentionally earning less; therefore, the Courts should assume that she is earning more than $23,000.00 per year.

   The Court stated that in order to impute income to the mother, they would have to find that the mother was deliberately trying to undermine or avoid her child support obligations.

In the case described above, there was not enough evidence to show that the wife changed career paths for the purpose of undermining or avoiding her support obligations.

2. A father was unemployed at the time a Court application was brought.  The mother argued that the father intentionally put himself in a position of unemployment. During the marriage the father had always earned $40,000.00 to $50,000.00 per year selling cars and farm equipment under the table.  Further, the father had worked as a welder, carried a real estate license, and had oilfield experience. Also, during the parties' separation, the father had purchased new furniture, bought a new welding truck, and taken the children on vacations.  The father claimed the only income he had was $1,300.00 per month from working on his parents' farm.

   The Court found that the father was intentionally under-employed. The father made little (no) attempt to find off-farm employment in 7 years even though he was in good health and capable of working off the farm. 

3. A father was a member of the armed forces and after separating from his wife he elected to return to school and become a cabinetmaker rather than accept a transfer to another base when the base where he was stationed closed.  His evidence was that he did not move, as he wanted to stay close to his children. His income went from $39,000.00 per year to $11,000.00 per year.

   The Court found that he was not intentionally under-employed and did not impute income to him.

The moral of the above stories appears to be that if you are unhappy about the amount of child support you are ordered to pay you had better think twice about quitting your job. Are you legitimately changing careers, or are you just trying to get around child support?

Stacey M. Johnson