Ex is self employed. Shows low income...
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My ex and I owned a business together before the divorce and I left it all to him without a fight. Wasn't worth anything anyways. He continues to run it himself. The thing is, we're going through a modification right now for custody and cs and he is claiming he only made $17,000 in 2014! He didn't submit tax returns for any years aside from 2012 when we both still owned it 50/50. That one shows his 50% was $19,660 which means his income should be close to double now that he holds 100% of the business.
How does the court figure cs if one doesn't submit his most recent returns and will the judge see that he's purposefully claiming less income (gets paid under the table) to get out of paying higher cs?
I know for a fact that he has
I know for a fact that he has filed because he has already spent his refund (trampoline, foosball table, used car...). He just didn't submit the returns. I think it may come back to bite him in the tush though. We've already started the trial and it's continued later this month but my lawyer got him to basically admit on the stand that if $19,660 was 50% then he makes roughly double that at $40,000 now owning 100% of the business. He's enough of a bonehead that he said "I guess, I would have to check with my tax person". He admitted he doesn't know how much he makes a year! Anyways, we're hoping that we can then use that figure in the cs form and that the judge will go along with that. He's been in that business for 18 years and owned it for 13 years, he should know what he makes on average by now.
But those still wouldn't
But those still wouldn't reflect money he's getting under the table though. We did request his income and supporting documents in the Discovery questions but, like I said, he only provided the one old return.
The modification is being
The modification is being done through the court system due to a major issue needing to be changed in the court order so the cs is also being handled through court. That being said, we only have what figures he submits to go off of for the cs form and the judge gets the final say in if it seems fair or not.
The issue is that the idiot
The issue is that the idiot bottom 10%ers of the legal profession family law Judges seem to rarely be intelligent enough to call the manipulators out on their crap and their hidden income. More nauseating is that they often refuse to recognize the facts about oppostion income even when it is thoroughly documented and spoon fed to them. If they do recognize it they rarely will stay the course on keeping that side's asses nailed to the CS wall.
My Skid's Sperm Idiot was one who did a lot of work under the table and only got paid a small amount on payroll. He is a licensed plumber.
It took a lot of work on our part including hiring a PI to help dig and document to get his ass nailed to the wall for an appropriate amount of CS. Pics and videos of him accepting cash with no delivery of a receipt went over well with the Judge. CS was set based on other information we provided since the Sperm Idiot ran from the process server (physically ran, on video, which also went over well with the Judge) and refused to come to court for the hearing he was stuck with what we were able to get implemented. Even when we did nail his ass to the wall with a 600% CS increase the idiot Judge quickly partially reversed the order when DickHead came screaming back to court when his employer was forced to invoke direct payroll withholding of CS when the new order went into effect.
When the Sperm Idiot played his sob story card about not getting the summons (remember, he physically ran from the process server on video) and brought his 1040 Ez for one year (three years were required by the court) and his last two pay stubs the judge reduced the new CS amount by 50% which resulted in CS having gone up by 300% instead of 600% as it should have when all of the toxic DipShitIot's income was considered.
In one last ditch effort to get CS returned to the original amount the worthless POS played the health insurance card. He had been ordered to provide health insurance for SS from before the kid turned 1yo and hever had provided it. In lieu of his provision of CS the first revision of the support order required him to pay 50% of the cost to cover SS on my insurance or my bride's depending on if it was my insurance or hers that we chose to take the benefit of. After 9 years he finally got health insurance for his kids and included SS in that coverage. Fortunately even the dipshit in the stupid black robes wielding the Fisher-Price toy wooden hammer say that his insurance was crap and kept him on the hook for 50% of the cost of insuring SS.
Karma delivered a final blow on that round of nail the worthless POS to the wall when he tried to lower CS 2yrs later only to be told that he had to wait another year since his motion to reduce CS due to the addition of health insurance had reset the clock on the review of CS. }:)
Be ready with the facts, numbers, and data. When XH tries to play the poor card have records of his expenses ready (House payments, car payments, utilities, etc...) and request that he provide a full accounting of how he pays his bills and survives on the NO INCOME that he claims.
That was part of our tactics and it was classic and much like watching a train wreck in slow motion when he and the Sperm GrandHag had to stammer through attempting to explain how he was broke when he lived rent free in a rental property owned my Sperm GrandHag and Sperm GrandPecker, drove their hand me down car, they provided free day care for his three younger also out of wedlock spawn by two other baby mamas, when his income was 23% of the median wage for plumbers in his county (we had reams of hard copy data on all of that).
You know his business better than he does, you know his expenses, etc.... You know were his income comes from and what it likely is. Use all of that. Don't forget to call the IRS and report his tax fraud efforts.
Fry his ass. And have fun doing it. }:) We did.
The idiot even had the
The idiot even had the audacity to leave the income part of the Income/Expense Statement we requested blank and said on the stand that he had his lawyer fill that out. He showed his living expenses as being almost double of what he's saying he makes.
I can't really get a fix on his income due to the fact that he is in a specialty field that's not a common career and his shop is on his parents' property so I can't really do any spying. Most of the income to the business when we both owned it came from orders out of state but I don't know where he's getting his business from these days.
He lives in poverty but that's because he chooses to and couldn't give a crap about his living conditions. He rents a two bedroom in a town with gravel streets and population 230, by choice. My DD sleeps on a mattress in the living room when she's there because bubby has the other room and she isn't comfortable sleeping in the bed in her dad's room he set up for her.
Regardless, his income is more than he's claiming or he wouldn't even be able to pay his rent and utilities. I'm hoping the judge sees through his crap the same as he did when I had to take him to court for contempt when he refused to move out of the marital home. He tried to play the pity card and the judge was disgusted with it and gave him 60 days to get out. Unfortunately for me, he didn't continue to pay the mortgage for those 60 days and I ended up paying the mortgage for two houses for those months. NOT fair to the kids either!
Voluntary poverty does not
Voluntary poverty does not forgive an NCP from their CS obligation. The difficulty is proving what a reasonable imputed income would be if they were employed appropriately in their field(s) of expertise.
We had it fairly easy as the Sperm Idiot is a licensed plumber, we could easily get his license number, my bride had 2yrs of their tax returns, and the wage range for licensed plumbers in Sperm Clan County is well documented and accessable on line.
When he ran from the process server and was a no show for the CS modification hearing we referenced all of that information and the Judge set CS at the median wage for licensed plumbers in the county. The first Custody/Support order before SS was 1yo set CS at $110/mo. When we defended against a custody battle about a year later his CS went up to $133/mo a week after SS turned 2yo. 9yrs later his CS went from $133/mo to $785/mo. He just about shit a brick when he got a $10 pay check once direct withholding went in to effect.
He came screaming back to court crying poor mouth begging for CS to go back to the $133/mo and how it was not fair since he did not know about the hearing, etc... So we rolled out the PI video of him running from the process server..... }:) The judge ultimately adjusted the $785/mo down to $385/mo but kept the $785 in place from the date of our first CS mod request and he had to pay nearly a year of arrears from the $785/mo. It took him 3yrs to pay off the arrears while paying the $385/mo.
I call this the Medusa School
I call this the Medusa School of (Not) Paying Child Support.
DH and Medusa owned a very successful business, which he walked away from in the divorce. She ran it into the ground in short order, all the while taking the inventory, damaging it out and then selling it on Ebay. As a self-employed person, she changed her draws from over $1000 per week (still waaaaaaaaaaaaay less than she was actually taking) to $200 per week.
When she lost custody, she produced tax returns that indicated her "income" was $16,000 per year. Uh huh. She had a $1500 per month mortgage and lived a very extravagant lifestyle. At the hearing, she tried to convince the Referee that she was a poor struggling woman.
Referee was great - told her that he had been a sole practitioner for years and totally understood that the goal of the self-employed was to show as little income as allowed by law in order to reduce the taxes due.
I snickered a little bit as he denied her request to recalculate the support due. She's been on a quest ever since to have it reduced. She loses every single time.