Everyone knows that being involved in any legal process, even Small Claims Court, involves emotions to some degree. Divorce is likely the most emotional of all legal proceedings. After all, you are dealing with your children — where they are going to live, what is the visitation plan, how much support is going to be paid or received. Is the support going to be enough for them? What about spousal support and debts that have to be divided? And what happens to the family home? What if there has been domestic violence perpetrated against one spouse?
One area where emotions need to be in check is in the area of child support and spousal support. This is especially true with today’s economic troubles wherein one party may lose a job or one party may not be working. What typically happens is the paying spouse wants income imputed to the other spouse who may have been laid off or has not worked in some time so that the support they are paying is not so high. The problem is that the paying spouse lets his or her emotions control the case. He or she simply tries to tell the judge that the non-working spouse can find a job or that he or she has worked for “Such and Such Company” in the past making X amount of money per month, therefore he or she should be imputed that income.
In a court of law, cases are decided on whether or not the burden of proof has been met. This is true for family law cases as well. If a spouse is seeking to impute income to the unemployed/underemployed other spouse, a burden of proof needs to be met. In a recent case, Marriage of Bardzik, the court indicated that the father had presented no evidence of the mother’s vocational abilities or opportunities to earn income and that merely pointing to her previous income is not sufficient to meet his burden of proof and thus denied his request that she be imputed income.
If you have a family law issue, make sure you take the emotions out of the case and are clear regarding what you need to prove. Then go out and get the evidence to support your position.
For more information, contact The Reape-Rickett Law Firm, at 661-288-1000, located at 23929 West Valencia Boulevard, Suite 404 in Valencia or log on to divorcedigest.com .