Actual Calculation of Monthly Income
If you are paid every two weeks, then you are paid 26 times a year (52 weeks in a year). For you to calculate your monthly income, you need to take one paycheck stub and multiply it by 26 to determine your annual income. You would then divide your annual income by 12 to make it a monthly figure.
If you are paid twice a month, you would take one paycheck stub and multiply it by 2 to make it a monthly figure. A lot of individuals I run into are incapable of even telling me if they are paid every two weeks or twice a month. It can make a difference and this is an extremely common area where people make mistakes in calculating their support.
Another way to calculate monthly income for hourly wage earners is to take your hourly rate and multiply it by 40 to make it a weekly figure. You then multiply it by 4.33 weeks to determine a monthly income. (52 weeks in 12 months = 4.33 weeks in a month).
In Albuquerque, they generally use one of the above methods, and do not simply rely on last year’s tax returns. For people using the paystub methods, they generally will average four or five of your most recent ones to make sure variations from check to check are accounted for in the final calculation. They will also sometimes use the Monthly year to date information on your paystub, and divide that by the number of months it represents.
Guaranteeing Your Income
When someone is paying child support and they lose their job, they should immediately file a Motion to Modify Child Support. The court will not go backwards to retroactively modify the child support, unless you file a motion. In this latter situation, they will go back to the date of your Motion. Make sure you file it prior to the time that your next payment is due. If you file the Motion on March 15th and the Hearing is on May 10th, they will go back to March 15th to modify your child support, meaning you should get a credit for your past payments. If you are capable of making the payments, then you should do so. If you cannot make the payments, I advise you to pay something. It will let the court know you are trying, and you do have an obligation to support your children.
The second thing the individual should do is apply for a lot of jobs. They should also document their applications for all of these jobs. The bigger the pile of paper the better, and the pile should include information about the job as well as your applications and follow up letters. Courts will generally immediately give you a break on your child support, but say that we are coming back in 3 or 4 months to review child support again. If you have not found a job with a comparable income, you had better have a big stack of paper to introduce as evidence.
There is sometimes a tendency to assume that an individual can find employment with a comparable income in that time frame. If you take a job that pays significantly less, say to put food on your table or to pay your friendly lawyer, you will have the court second guessing your decision. Additionally, suppose you take a job, but continue looking for a better job and your current employer finds out your looking and fires you. Under this scenario you can end up with a checkered job history and diminished employment possibilities.
Compare this situation with one where the custodial parent (recipient of child support) loses their job. They have the financial hardship of unemployment, but you cannot really take them to court and they do not have to prove anything to anyone. You could argue that they are voluntarily unemployed and have an obligation to support the children to the best of their ability, but the court is going to look at you like you are goofy. Their contribution to child support is retained in their home, so if they do not have those funds available they are only hurting their own household. Yes, the kids live there and obviously will be harmed, but what do you want the court to do. They could order the custodial parent not to buy adult goods or monitor the spending in the home, but the courts absolutely do not want to get involved with how the child support is spent or the spending habits of the custodial parent. It would be a pandora's box of new litigation.
If you have been terminated for cause, the Court may look at you and say it is your fault and you are obligated to provide for the children to the best of your ability. Walking off the job or getting fired for calling the boss a name would be examples of where you would have a problem. If you were fired from a sales job for poor performance, you also may be subject to judicial scrutiny. The Court may choose not to believe the reasons for your dismissal or that you did it on purpose to damage the other party. Applying for and receiving unemployment benefits will help assure the Court that you are not at fault for your dismissal. If there is a letter of termination or layoff, make sure you get a copy of it for the Court.
Notice that if you were still married and got fired for swearing at your boss, there would be nothing that anyone could do about it. Once you have the Court involved through child support, though, you largely become a guarantor of this income. If you mistakenly fail to comply with keeping a professional license, the Court will have little sympathy for you. You have effectively become a guarantor of that income.
- Overview
- Page One - Child Support Statutes and Full-Employment
- Page Two - Self Employed Individuals and Deductions From Income
- Page Three - Calculating Income and Guaranteeing Income
- Page Four - Miscellaneous Income Rulings