Child support based on actual expenses

A

Acadia71

New member
I have been separated for 10 months and I'm paying a disgusting amount of support to my ex wife in my opinion. $5100/month

We based the numbers on me making $144000 and her starting and 0 and stepping up $60000 over a 6 year period.

Spousal support in year 1 is $3121 per month and by year 6 it drops to $1427.

For child support we also used the imputed incomes but it will be up for review at the end of year 3. For year 1 I have been paying $2033/month, it drops about $100 for year 2 and 3 then we review it.

In reality I always made about $200-250K per year, and this first year should be no different. I'm buying real estate at a very discounted price and it should cash flow very well.

My ex is educated but refuses to work in her field, she mostly wants to sit around and pretend she is some kind of spiritual being. She took $240k in cash out of the divorce and bought a house for $300k. She isn't suffering any.

Hopefully that is enough of the background info.....here is my question. At the end of 3 years when we review child support, there is a very good chance that my income will be at about $300k, hers will be closer to $30k.

That gives us a differential of $270k, and if I'm using the tables right it will mean I have to pay her $3707 per month......I refuse to pay $3700 per month, I work in camp and have my kids on all my days off. Regardless of my income I don't believe that my ex needs that much money to have my kids for 2 weeks out of the month. That's absolutely disgusting. I will actually pay MORE in the fourth year than I am in the first year.

Could someone please give me some suggestions on how to deal with this? My plan is to keep very good track of what it actually costs me to keep the kids for the 2 weeks of the month that I have them. Then I would be willing to pay that much at most. Keep in mind that she will still be getting about $2300 per month in spousal at this point in time.

Other options that I would like to avoid would be quitting my job, selling assets to my sibling for $1 and just being a bum.....or fighting it in court until the lawyers get rich.

Hopefully someone can give me some suggestions, I'm so sick of paying for everything, and I have 5 years left. I don't work hard so that my ex-wife can live a better life. I already earned the money to get her a house which should be free and clear right away, I'm done!

Thanks in advance.
 
Sadly theres a thing called the federal child support guidelines which means you pay the amount based on your income. If you have 50/50 offset her income comes into play but at that difference it will still be high.

Good luck quitting your job as she can have an income imputed to you and you will be paying the same, have no income and most likely pay her legal fees.

You could try to work on the spousal and try to get her to work but that will be unlikely.

Let go of your bitterness, it does nothing for you.
 
if you make 2 x what you made at separation then you will, indeed, pay more - child support guidelines.

Did you have your SS amount determined through trial or did you consent?

How many years were you married and how old are you and your ex?

Selling your things to your siblings for $1 is a one-way ticket to hell unless you like the idea of putting them through aggressive litigation. Yes, maintenance enforcement can and will go after them if they are hiding your assets.

A $300,000.00 home? Where does one buy one so cheap nowadays?
 
arabian said:
if you make 2 x what you made at separation then you will, indeed, pay more - child support guidelines.

Did you have your SS amount determined through trial or did you consent?

How many years were you married and how old are you and your ex?

Selling your things to your siblings for $1 is a one-way ticket to hell unless you like the idea of putting them through aggressive litigation. Yes, maintenance enforcement can and will go after them if they are hiding your assets.

A $300,000.00 home? Where does one buy one so cheap nowadays?
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I consented to the spousal support. I'm 38, she will be 37 shortly. We were married 10 years......I agreed to too many years of spousal as far as I'm concerned.

The home is in Cold Lake Alberta. 30 year old single family home. List price was $315k, I haven't checked actual sale price yet but regardless, she should be virtually mortgage free.


So what happens if I just quit my job, or conveniently get fired from it?

She is capable of making $60k for sure but chooses to do basically nothing. How do I get out of this?

I'm all for supporting my kids, but they don't need $1800 per week spent on them......I don't spend that much on them, not even close.

The system is ridiculous.
 
rockscan said:
Sadly theres a thing called the federal child support guidelines which means you pay the amount based on your income. If you have 50/50 offset her income comes into play but at that difference it will still be high.

Good luck quitting your job as she can have an income imputed to you and you will be paying the same, have no income and most likely pay her legal fees.

You could try to work on the spousal and try to get her to work but that will be unlikely.

Let go of your bitterness, it does nothing for you.
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I get that the bitterness does nothing for me, but why should I work to give so much away? At what point is it just excessive? It doesn't cost $3600/month to have 2 kids for 2 weeks out of the month.
 
I get a little bitter when I go to her house and she is doing a huge renovation with no income then offers to SELL me the leftover linoleum she has.......why would I want to pay for it twice?

I'm only human. I apologize for that
 
Acadia71 said:
I get a little bitter when I go to her house and she is doing a huge renovation with no income then offers to SELL me the leftover linoleum she has.......why would I want to pay for it twice?

I'm only human. I apologize for that
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Court looks at what sort of lifestyle children would be enjoying if parents stayed together. It's not their fault that their parents fucked-up and separated.

Go ahead and try to reduce your support by intentional underemployment or unemployment. Your ex will get the best lawyer that money can buy and nail your ass to the ground. You will have arrears that will never leave you and when you come to your senses and get a job again you will find that MEP Alberta has garnished your wages (yep even if you are a subcontractor so don't even think about it).

10 years is not a long marriage. You can/should have a review built into it. If your lawyer didn't do this then get another lawyer. Your ex and you are young. Your ex is young enough to retrain to re-enter the workforce. If she doesn't then it's not your concern, all you need to have in place is gradually increasing wage imputation on her. A competent lawyer will guide you on this. Spousal support range for your circumstances are not indefinite. Having children though is a long-range thing. Hopefully your children will go to university and you should make financial plans for that. A good argument is that you want to take SS payments and redirect them to children's education fund. This way you still get the tax benefit and have knowledge that children's education is getting funded. What plans does your ex have for the children's university education? A good question to pose to her at some point.
 
She went on vacation to BC and left the kids with me, she is just looking out for herself. I know how most people likely think I'm an asshole for posting this but I have my reasons to be frustrated.

I'm sorry but the system is a joke.
 
Joke or not you are in it and subject to the rules. You allowed this situation to happen over ten years where she wasn't working. If you want to fight, work on getting an income imputed to her for child support purposes and take the kids 50% of the time.
 
rockscan said:
Joke or not you are in it and subject to the rules. You allowed this situation to happen over ten years where she wasn't working. If you want to fight, work on getting an income imputed to her for child support purposes and take the kids 50% of the time.
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Can she agree to taking less? If I get it in writing can she come back at me?
 
Child support is technically the right of the child... the more you make the more you pay... hey I get it... it sucks... it sucks when you work hard and the ex reaps the benefits as well... when my husband and his ex divorced he made 1/4 of what he is making now... over the past 7 years he has worked hard (and I have pushed him) to enter a career that he now loves and is making money... every single year his ex has reaped the benefits of his hard work because CS is for the children. A parent doesn't have a right to sign away CS... sure she could agree to a lesser amount but she could also come back and ask for the correct amount down the road...

CS is pretty black and white, not much you can do about that unfortunately. Your only discussion point will be SS. In my opinion if you try to go to court to lower CS to below guidelines you will end up paying full CS plus her court costs


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CS is what CS is. It's just math, and the fact that children are supposed to have a quality of life, spread across two houses, that is based on the total income of the two parents. When you have one parent who makes so much more money than the other one, even offset with 50-50 looks a lot like full table CS.

All you can do is make sure an income is imputed to her, so she has less incentive to sit around unemployed.

Are you using her imputed income to determine her CS for the offset calculation?

Also, CS should be reviewed and updated every year, not after three years. What's going on there?

Your situation is one in which the greater fairness of the half-offset method becomes obvious. Is it too late to try to switch to that?

If she knew you were making $200k to $250k already, you should be glad you got to start at $144k. And it also sounds like SS ends after six years? That's a big thing to look forward to.
 
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Acadia71 said:
She went on vacation to BC and left the kids with me, she is just looking out for herself. I know how most people likely think I'm an asshole for posting this but I have my reasons to be frustrated.

I'm sorry but the system is a joke.
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And someday you will go on a vacation and leave the kids with her.... Pretty standard stuff.

Lucky kids to have 2 parents who love and care for them.
Instead of being bitter that your ex is living well (which is the best revenge they say b.t.w.) look at it that your children are living a decent lifestyle.

I always took a vacation by myself or with friends and left son at home with his father (or grandparents). My ex used to have a great time going on trips to Vegas or Reno or golfing with his friends.

What your ex does now with her life isn't really any of your concern. Your only concern is that your children are healthy, happy and well-cared for. You have to let the bitterness about your ex and her lifestyle go or it will eat at you and then even your kids won't want to be around you. Hopefully you aren't griping about their mother to the kids...
 
Like the others said, cs is the right of the child and you and your ex cant bargain it away. Regardless of how you live your life now, the children would have enjoyed the full benefit of your income had you not divorced and they are not to be punished as a result of the split.
 
rockscan said:
Like the others said, cs is the right of the child and you and your ex cant bargain it away. Regardless of how you live your life now, the children would have enjoyed the full benefit of your income had you not divorced and they are not to be punished as a result of the split.
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That's all fine and dandy, but my long term goal even while I was married was to make extra money in real estate so that I can stop working in camp. This will cause my income to rise substantially and then when I make the move to quit it will make a fairly big drop. According to the "rules" I'm never allowed to choose a pay cut, despite the fact that my ex refuses to work in the field that she went to college to do. She used to make good money but now refuses to work at anything more than a part time job that pays next to nothing. Why can't I choose to quit working in camp, quit missing out on half my kids life, and still be able to support them at a lower income? WITHOUT being handcuffed to the higher salary.
 
Did you not have this step down/transition to working put into your agreement? Are you still working on the agreement that you can do that?

It doesnt matter what your plans were while married, you set up a situation where you made a high income and she stayed at home. Now you have set that standard. You can try to quit and go into real estate but she can argue you are purposely underemployed.
 
rockscan said:
Did you not have this step down/transition to working put into your agreement? Are you still working on the agreement that you can do that?

It doesnt matter what your plans were while married, you set up a situation where you made a high income and she stayed at home. Now you have set that standard. You can try to quit and go into real estate but she can argue you are purposely underemployed.
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I have a step down in the spousal, it steps down every year for 6 years.

If she can argue that I'm underemployed that's fine, but if she is easily capable of making $60k and she is only making $10k then how does her argument trump mine?

The same holds true, it doesn't matter that we got divorced, she is no longer a stay at home wife, she has 6 months of the year to herself and won't work. If this is how our system really is then I understand the high suicide rates, I was there for a while when we first split.

She won't even let my kids get vaccinated, among other things, so if I have to build a case to show she is unfit and unstable I could do that too.

Very frustrating! She doesn't clean my house anymore, but I have to pay for hers.....what a joke.
 
When deciding on a child support amount, you may find it helpful to know how much support a judge would likely order to be paid in your situation.
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You cant avoid the FCSG. If your ex got legal advice (which she would before signing anything) she will be told that anything below guideline ESPECIALLY at your income level will not jive with a judge.

You have to pay the legal amount of cs.
 
Acadia71 said:
Does this hold any value at all?



Child support agreements
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Sure if your ex agrees but do you really think she's going to agree to take a huge cut in CS just because you don't like the laws and what you have to pay?

If you think real estate is such a sure thing quit your other job and get into the real estate but if your income drops you continue to pay what you would be had you not left the first job.

You can try your best to argue less CS but at the income level you are talking about a judge will laugh at you


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