BM not working?

[Foster_Mom]

I am seeking advice for my DH case on CS. The BM is not working and has not since last year. At that time we had gone to court for modification in time shared but the CS was reduced. BM is remaried and her Huby must bring in alot of $ becuse she choose to quit working and stay home with her two new children. She lives in a 200 Thousand dollar home verses our older home of about 96 thousand. She recently filed a motion with the CS office to review our case and increase support based on the fact that she was not working. Nothing but that has changed this last year. I have read everything this site has to offer on the subject but I am not sure how it would apply to this case. Do we have to go all the way back to court to keep this from happening as she is capable of holding a job but chooses not to? The children in question are already of school age. It is her children from the new marrige who are young. Not my hubbys problem but either way Court or No Court this will cost our family to much! I also suppose the CS office will agree with her regardless. Has anyone else got other information that might be helpful?

[joni]

you can ask to have her salary inputed as if she was working

but I will tell you to not get your hopes up, many states don't really factor in the custodial parents income and if it does, it's at such an insignificant amount.

for example, we're in Michigan and if we doubled the mom's salary from $40K/year to $80K/year, her child support was only reduced by $80/mo.

so there you go.

[wendl]

You can request that you imput her income based on her education level and what a person of that age/gender would make on the state average.

DH has had to do this with bm before as she chooses to not work.

**These are my opinions, they are not legal advice**

[Stirling]

If your state uses both parent's income to calculate CS then you can request that the Court impute income to the BM that fairly represents her earnings potential.  The CS would then be calculated using your husband's actual income and the BM's imputed income.  It should be noted that the BM is not requred to actually get a job, but merely be treated as if she has a job in order to more accurately calculate the CS amount.

I would imagine that her last job would be a good indication of what her true earnings potential is.  You may need to find comparable jobs in your area and what the wages are to support your position in court.  I would think that a Judge would at least impute minimum wages at 40 hours a week.