Child Support
payments in Canada
are appointed by the judge and starting from 1997 regulated by federal Child
Support Guidelines. The initial appointment of the Child Support payments id
divided into four steps. It starts with the calculation of the gross incomes of
the parties. The second step is entering the non-custodial parent's gross
income is entered into the Table, under the appropriate number of children. It
shows the tax free amount of money the non-custodial parent must pay the
custodial parent each month for child support. If the parenting time is shared
equal then the gross incomes of each parent are entered into the Table. The
lower result is then subtracted from the higher number and then the difference
is payable by the higher income earner to the lower income earner. Still there
are some excepti`ons for some cases. Third step is determining the expenses for
things like child care, health care, educational expenses, post-secondary
educational expenses or extracurricular expenses, the expenses are shared in
proportion to the parties' gross incomes.
While in Canada
everything is pretty clear with appointing the initial Child-Support itself a
big question is what happens to the Child-Support payments when the payer
changes his employment or salary. The Child Support Guidelines state that the
court may impute such amount of income to a spouse as it considers appropriate
in the circumstances. The circumstances include situations when the spouse is
intentionally under-employed or unemployed, other than where the
under-employment or unemployment is required by the needs of a child of the
marriage or any child under the age of majority or by the reasonable
educational or health needs of the spouse. The most important factor for all
the decisions of the courts is how and why did the employment or salary
changed. The court actually works under the line that after a divorce the child
must benefit from the finances of the both spouses. If one of the spouses lost
his job intentionally (voluntary act) for example choose to earn less than he
or she is capable of earning or he or she choose not to work when capable of
earning income, then the court will most probably be on the side of the other
spouse. Still if the loss of the job or income is lost due to no fault of the
spouse (like reducing the hours of work or being fired for some other reason),
the section does not apply to such situations. In practice the results vary
from case to case and from province to province. While it is easy to conduct an
investigation and find out the reason of loosing income, there are also some
ethical questions involved. The biggest one is that Child Support Payments
usually limit the personal interests of the spouses. For example if you worked
as an office clerk and decided to pursue a music career you will most probably
be limited by the payments and the court will not support your decision.
