Q: My son's mother quit a very good nursing job to take a lower paying job in a doctor's office. The change didn't give her
more time with my son or have any career benefit. She now says she is going to quit that job and work in a bank where she will make even less money. She wants to go back to court to get more child support because her income is so much lower now. At the last order we made about the same amount of money. I have my son about 45% of the time. Will the judge consider that she quit a good job when we go back to court and that I have him so much (164 nights each year)? Thanks for the help.
A: You have to understand there are no hard and fast rules but instead "positions" you can take. If you are going to find yourself back in court you are going to need legal representation. Child support is set according to Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Judicial Administration. If you just read the rule and nothing else you would assume that child support is set based soled on the current gross income of each parent, the cost of daycare and the cost of covering the child for health insurance. If it were that simple people could probably perform all the calculations themselves, but, like many thing legal, what a rule or statute says cannot be determined solely by the wording of the rule or statute. Everything is a matter of interpretation. Child support is actually based on a parents earning ability so yes you can argue that the mother is under employed of her own violation. Based on the time you have the children in your custody (if you can prove you incur costs during your time) you can also seek a variance. Both of these facts create issues for a judge to decide.
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