Income Imputation
If your ex-partner is employed, determining her/his income for the purposes of child or spousal support is relatively straightforward.We use his/her income before taxes as outlined within Line 150 of their tax return and apply this number to the Child Support Guidelines when determining child support or the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines for spousal support in Ontario.
What happens when you can’t determine income?
What is not so straightforward is determining your ex-partner’s income when that income does not accurately reflect the true amount of money available to her/him (ex. where the individual is self-employed). Or when they are not earning as much as they should. Some situations include the individual is intentionally underemployed or unemployed, refuses better income earning opportunities, refuses to work within his/her field, decides to switch jobs from a better paying job to a lower paying but more personally rewarding one, or wants to to volunteer work for no pay.
In these cases, the Court may “impute”, or assign, an income to him/her that is higher than what is set out on their Line 150 for support purposes. The Court has this authority further to Section 19 of the Federal Child Support Guidelines.
There is a high evidentiary threshold to meet to establish a case for income imputation and we at Noori Law have years of experience dealing with this issue. Contact us to book an appointment with our family lawyers in Etobicoke.
