Your Legal Questions Answered

It’s really neither. The Court is concerned with each person’s earning capacity at the time the case is ongoing and so the proper method involves assessment each party’s history of employment and earnings, level of education, certifications, licenses as well as many other facts that could have an impact upon a person’s current earning capacity. We ultimately use a lot of different methods to discern earning capacity for purposes of calculating child support and spousal maintenance. A person’s income could be rising or falling due to their industry or personal capacity, their income can fluctuate wildly from year to year or they could have a government job or other big corporate position where they receive a salary with regular but small cost of living increases. All of these circumstances cannot be addressed with one method for calculating income. We must treat each situation based upon the important facts of any given situation and apply the spousal maintenance guidelines to meet that situation. Otherwise, we might end up with something insufficient, disproportionate or impossible to enforce.