Is a person who has been ordered to pay child support entitled to reduce their working time or change their career path?
British Columbia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Kennedy v. Kennedy, 2014 BCSC 637 (CanLII):
Persons who have been ordered to pay child support are entitled to make decisions to reduce their working time or to change their career path, provided those decisions are reasonable at the time they are taken, considering all the circumstances. In determining what is reasonable in the circumstances, the court will have regard to the age, education, experience, skills and health of the payor, as well as the availability of work, the freedom to relocate and other obligations. If the payor establishes that his or her decision was reasonable, then the court may decide not to impute a higher income to the payor, for all or some of the time period under examination. See Donovan v. Donovan at paras. 19 and 33. I take this to mean that a payor’s change of career, if reasonable, may amount to an excuse for some periods of intentional underemployment, or unemployment.
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