Support and related income considerations

When support (either child or spousal) is an issue in a family law case, there are a number of questions which need to be addressed before the actual support calculation is made.  

For example, in the case of child support, is a young person over the age of 18 still eligible to receive child support?  If so, in what form is that support to be paid? To whom? 

On the issue of spousal support, is the potential support recipient making best efforts to contribute to his or her own support based on their current ability to do so?

The income of the potential payor is a key question to address in any consideration of support obligations.  “Income for tax purposes" is not necessarily “income for support purposes” in family law.  In other words, simply because Canada Revenue Agency accepts a potential payor’s representations of his or her income for tax purposes does not mean that a family law Judge will do the same. 

Family law spreads a much wider sweep over a potential payor’s income sources to determine the true extent of his or her ability to pay support.  

The Child Support Guidelines, which technically apply to the calculation of child support but have now been wildly accepted as applying to spousal support calculations as well, permit the inclusion in income for support purposes of a wide variety of income sources.  The intent of the legislation is to ensure that financial dependants receive support based on all sources of the payor's actual income but also on sources which are available to the payor, even if he or she chooses not to tap into them. 

By way of one example only, income earned by a business which is not paid out to a shareholder but could be is vulnerable to being included in his or her income for support purposes.  Personal expenses run through the business are also vulnerable to being added back to the payor’s income for support purposes.

The child support "grid"...

I recently heard a radio talk show host refer to a "child support grid". I have heard this phrase used in other contexts as well. What does it mean?

The "grid", otherwise known as a "table", is a tool which assists us in calculating the first of the two components of child support, commonly known as the "table amount".

Child support in Canada is generally calculated using both federal and provincial legislation (depending on whether the parents of the child were married or not) called the Child Support Guidelines. This legislation includes a series of tables which set out monthly amounts payable by the parent with whom the child or children in question do not live primarily, in different Provinces and based on different income levels. 

These tables are sometimes referred to as "grids" because they actually look like grids. On the left hand side of each table, there is a column with incremental income amounts and to the right are corresponding table child support amounts, depending on the number of children involved.

There is a separate table for each Province because the cost of raising children varies from location to location. 

The child support amounts set out in the grid represent the monthly amount to be paid by the non-residential parent to the primary residential parent, on a monthly and repeating basis - the tables do not provide for an automatic terminating event or date - that is a question which depends on the facts of each particular case.

The amounts provided for in the tables are "net" to the recipient parent. This means that no tax is paid by that parent on the table amount received. Correspondingly, the payor parent does not have an opportunity to deduct these amounts for tax purposes (this is different than the tax treatment of periodic spousal support).

Imputing Income for Support Purposes

If you live in Ontario and are involved in a family law matter, you may have heard about the possibility of someone (perhaps you) being imputed with income. What does this mean?

The Child Support Guidelines (both at the provincial and federal level) give the Court the power to make a finding that a payor of child support should be treated, for the purposes of a court case, as if he or she were making an income which is not actually being received by that person.

There are a number of scenarios in which this may take place. By way of one example only: a parent claims that he or she cannot pay support because they are jobless and yet, that parent cannot provide a persuasive reason for their being unemployed. Plainly put, if a parent deliberately tries to avoid their child support obligations by being without employment, that parent risks being imputed with income by the Court, usually based on their historical ability to earn a particular level of income.

Imputed income is an interesting but complex area of family law and I encourage you to speak to a lawyer about your particular scenario to see if the concept is relevant to your case.