The courts do recognize that child support may be a heavy burden for some parents trying to maintain and manage two households. But parents still cannot avoid their financial obligation to pay child support just because of financial difficulties. There must be a showing for the case that any reduction in their income was completely involuntary.

There may be some parents who intentionally reduce their own income in order to try and limit or terminate their child support payments. However, courts have developed options such as imputed income to deal with these types of unreliable parents and ensure that children are able to receive the financial support they need for food, shelter, and clothing. 

When a parent’s current earnings do not reflect the actual income or earning capacity, a judge will examine the other factors to figure out an appropriate amount of potential income, including a parent’s:

• Historical earnings from the past 5 years; 

• Education or vocational training; 
• Employment history; 
• Available employment opportunities in the community, and; 
• Reasons for leaving a previous job. 

A judge will evaluate all the evidence and testimony based upon the request made by either parent to impute income to the other. In accordance with the stated factors, a court will assign each parent an income based on what the parent could be earning. This only applies to any parents who have been out of the workforce for a while and they may have a full-time minimum wage income imputed to them. 

Generally, when courts are deciding how much income to impute, they will need to determine what is the parent’s “earning capacity.” This means the individual income potential which is composed of the parent’s ability to work, willingness and opportunity to work.

The ability to work is usually determined by examining the parent’s educational level, work skills and employment history. Willingness to work is determined by seeing the parent’s behavior and asking questions like, is he or she actively looking for jobs, sending out resumes, or attending any interviews. Opportunity to work involves a consideration about the availability of appropriate job opportunities in the local area and a determination if there are companies in the parent’s field hiring or is there an employment slump. 

If the parent has the ability and opportunity to work, a court can determine how much to impute by reviewing evidence from examining the factors mentioned above. Court would also think about the salaries for a job that a parent would qualify for.

Additionally, the court may even use the most recent salary the parent earned and impute that amount. Sometimes, if it is challenging to calculate how much that parent could make, the court will impute minimum wage. The exact amount imputed will vary and depend on the specific circumstances of each case.