These divorces are considered “high conflict,” and they can involve one or both parties engaging in behaviors designed to punish their ex, even if it hurts everyone in the end.
Say, Natalia and Gregory recently got divorced. The couple has three kids, and Gregory was a high earner, so he was ordered to pay a substantial amount of child support. Now, however, Gregory has suddenly opted to take a $100,000 pay cut. Natalia suspects he’s made this move just to spite her and reduce his child support.
Fortunately, if that’s really the case, the law protects Natalia and her kids from exactly this type of behavior.
Gregory can’t just cut his child support
The first piece of good news for Natalia is that a pay cut doesn’t mean child support automatically declines.
“A parent can’t unilaterally reduce court-ordered child support because their paycheck got smaller. They have to ask the court to modify the order,” Katherine Miller, managing partner and founder at Miller Law Group told Moneywise. “The other parent can oppose that request and present evidence that the drop in income was intentional.”
R. Deno Cole, an attorney at Cole, Guindi & Pienkowski agreed, commenting, “If a child support order is already in place and a parent wishes to reduce the amount, the burden is on that parent to prove a ‘material change’ in income or other circumstances. A parent cannot simply decide to pay less on their own. They must return to court and obtain a modification.”
Cole explained that there are serious consequences if Gregory simply reduces the payments on his own. “Failing to pay the ordered amount can result in a judgment for arrears and a finding of contempt, which may lead to fines or even incarceration.”
Voluntary underemployment doesn’t lead to a lower support bill
Should Gregory decide to persist in his plan and go to court to ask for a reduction on the basis of his lower income, if he really did reduce his income for purposes of avoiding support, his request is likely to be unsuccessful.
“I once represented a dentist who earned well over $100,000 a year in his divorce,” Cole said. “He was frustrated that he would have to pay the maximum child support amount and threatened to leave dentistry to work as a carpenter or a fast-food clerk. I advised him that his wife’s attorney would have a strong argument that he was ‘voluntarily underemployed.’”
Cole explained that when someone purposefully lowers their income to avoid their obligations to their kids, just as his client considered and as Gregory is trying to do here, “the court could still base his child support obligation on his earning capacity as a dentist rather than on whatever lower wages he chose to accept.”
