It happens. It may be your fault or it may have occurred through no fault of your own. Nonetheless, losing your job often initiates a stressful time in your life, especially if you are on the hook for child support.
Child support is generally calculated based on your income from your previous year's work. However, this will fail to accurately represent your current income if you have recently lost your job.
An objective of the Alberta Child Support Guidelines is to establish a fair standard of support and this can be satisfied by considering the payor's current ability to pay. This means that a loss of employment can lead to a reduction of your child support obligations. Using this method, your child support obligation would be calculated by estimating your current annual income with an adjustment at year's end once your actual income is known.
However, if the Court suspects that you are intentionally unemployed or intentionally under-employed, then a Court application to reduce your child support obligations will likely be unsuccessful.
If you are a payor of child support and have recently lost your job, please contact Proskiw Law for a full breakdown of your options.
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