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Imputed Income: A Look at What Courts Find Persuasive

By Marcy L. Wachtel and Lori Meyers
August 02, 2014

In determining spousal maintenance and child support awards, the parties' respective financial circumstances ' assets, liabilities and, most importantly, income ' are the most important documentation and information for courts to consider and practitioners to present. However, in many cases, historical and current income do not provide the full picture and, alone, cannot form the basis for support awards. In those cases, courts have the discretion to impute income to one or both of the parties in order to ensure that the resulting support obligations are fair, reasonable and adequate.

Case law suggests that courts are primarily interested in providing for the children and financially dependent party, and are less concerned about whether the support obligations arising from the imputed income amounts can realistically be met. The noteworthy reported New York cases discussed herein suggest that courts analyze earning capacity as well as actual earnings and the parties' standard of living, and whether the reported income is sufficient to sustain that standard, when considering whether to impute earnings.

Earning Capacity As a Basis for Imputed Earnings

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