Gainesville Child Support Attorney discusses establishing child support with unknown income
The law in Florida related to the establishment of child support is constantly changing. The Florida Legislature recently enacted some very important legislation regarding child support. These amendments to the calculation and determination of child support are effective beginning October 1, 2010. Amendments to 61.30(2)(b) provide for imputing or assigning an income to a party who does not provide current, accurate income records. This is now allowed to be done by allowing for a rebuttable presumption that the parent has at least the income equivalent to the median income of year-round full time workers as established by current population reports published by the United States Bureau of the Census. Previously a party could simply refuse to cooperate with establishing an income amount for them for purposes of calculating child support and require the party requesting child support to incur extreme expense in proving an amount of income to impute. Typically when this occurred, the court could only impute minimum wage to the party which often was much less than what they were actually capable of earning.
Furthermore, a Trial Court is now authorized to impute an income to a party that is greater than that party has ever actually earned. However, this can occur only if the party in question was recently degreed, licensed, certified, relicensed, or recertified and thus qualified for a higher income. When doing so, the Court must consider the existing time sharing plan and their geographic location.
Establishment of child support can be a complicated process. You should seek experienced legal counsel to help. Call our office at 352-327-3643 to speak to an attorney right away. We can help.