Child Support Modification

North Carolina Divorce Law Divorce and Separation Answers
1

My son aged out and graduated high school in June. Know I would be filing for a child support modification in June, my ex wife quit her second job on May 28th. Her lawyer says the court will only consider income at the time of my motion filing. She had been working a 2nd job for quite some time and certainly appears that she depressed her income to allow for more child support. She did the same thing with PSS. She quit her 2nd job and then once PSS was given, she went back to working a secondary job. I have no doubt in my mind she wll do this again. Will the court NOT consider her income up to June? Is this something I will have to make a case for and hope the judge will rule that way?

I live in MA and I spend roughly 3K/yr on travel to visit with my kids. My ex’s lawyer claims I moved away on my own and extraordinary expenses will not be considered. I move back to MA to get married and I was also able to transfer with my company. It is also my ex’s plan to move back to our home state of MA after she sells the house. Again, is this something that is routinely given or wil I have to “lawyer” for it. The travel expenses have financially strapped me and could use the help.

Thank you for your time.
MS

2

The court looks to the income of the parties at the time the action was filed. You can try to put on evidence to the court that she quit her job right before modification would be coming up so that she could continue to get a higher level of child support. You would be trying to demonstrate that this action was done in bad faith, so that the court might consider it.

You might be able to re-coup expenses related to transportation costs. The court can include travel expenses as an extraordinary expense in the calculation of child support, so you might consider asking for this in your modification as well. The cost of travel can be included in the calculation of support, if the judge determines including the expenses to be reasonable. It will ultimately be up to the judge’s discretion.