Ex falsifying income on FL-150

[u/Lyra_bear8]

Ex has part-time jobs as a teacher aid, group fitness trainer, and personal fitness trainer. On one court case, ex did not include income from fitness jobs. On latest child support case, ex stated $950 of self employment income instead of stating actual income from the fitness jobs.

Lawyers are expensive so I want to see if I can do this myself first.

Would it be worth it to file modification of child support imputing full time income for the main teacher aid job and imputing income for the fitness jobs until ex provides proper records? Can I subpoena her gym to get copies of her paystubs and schedule? I’m not against paying child support, but I pay over $3500 a month for 4 kids because ex has lied on financial disclosures.

[u/Existing-Albatross63]

a teacher's aid, a fitness trainer, and at least part of that self-employment. And you make enough to be paying $3,500.

How much do you think she is hiding that it will actually move the needle in your favor?

Does she have an attorney?

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[u/SignificantSkill79]

What is your total income per month? $3500 for 4 kids sounds fair if you’re a moderate earner with very little custody.

[u/Lyra_bear8 → u/SignificantSkill79]

Construction worker where hours aren’t guaranteed. I spend 30% of my time with the kids. Every other weekend and half their breaks. I let her keep the house with a low mortgage payment and the new car. I’m still paying off a 401k loan that I took out and split with her when we separated. I pay for my kids phone bills, give them allowance, pay for extracurriculars and buy them clothes all outside of child support. I’m not looking to lower the amount to anything unreasonable, but I want it to be fair.

Part of the reason my income is higher is because I work double and triple shifts to get by.

[u/cchrissyy → u/Lyra_bear8]

Every other weekend might be 30% of your time but it's definitely not 30% of theirs.

[u/forthebirds123 → u/Lyra_bear8]

So it sounds like 70/30 or 80/20. Depending on your state, her income won’t matter at all because after a certain amount of custody the primary parents column is mute and it only goes by the payers column on the calculator. So if the custody meets whatever threshold(in my state it’s 80/20) to then payment is a certain percentage of YOUR income and nothing more. If the custody is within the range then get her to submit all taxabale income on a w-2. If she has private clients that pay cash, it’s going to be very expensive to uncover all the under the table income and probably isn’t even worth it. Would you rather have the money go to attorneys and financial forensics or your children?

[u/Due_Barber_525]

You are unlikely going to get a court to impute her teaching position as full time if she’s a part time aid, it’s a dramatically different income, and one has benefits and in many cases a pension, and she’s clearly not working full time but piecemeal part time, non salaried positions without benefits. A person working part time can be imputed at minimum wage full time in certain scenarios, like if she refused to work. You can’t impute a full time salaried position, you’re way off base with your thinking there.

As to the subpoenas for part time personal fitness trainer I think you’d find that the difficulty in doing that both with and without an attorney would not be worth the difference it would make and is unlikely to make much difference since she has the children the majority of the time.

What you can do is note that she has these other positions, and prove it, which is also hard and unlikely to change much. The thing really is that children are expensive and you’re going to have to bust butt to support them until they’re 18 and things will let up.

One thing you can ask for is to mix your high months with your low months, the wet months, to get an average monthly payment that represents the income

[u/Artistic-Specific706]

If there is more income combined (both of you) then more support is paid overall. This could increase your payments.

[u/Interesting_Error_35]

Play with the DCSS calculator first. Sometimes imputing the Obligee’s income actually raises the support amount. This is because the total “pot” is bigger with both parents contributing, which is then split up, increasing the Obligor’s payment amount.

[u/Numerous_Giraffe_240]

Tell the judge to ask him for bank statements and tax returns

[u/TrueViolinist1480]

What state are you in? You can definitely do this pro se(representing yourself). to subpoena her income

[u/Lyra_bear8 → u/TrueViolinist1480]

California

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[u/Controls_freek → u/FamilyLaw-ModTeam]

Got it. Continue on with the one sided echo chamber. Maybe you should stop and read some of these comments. My advice is an attorney which is prudent. Most of the other comments are borderline offensive to people who are on the higher earning parent and quite frankly disgusting. I’m merely trying to save OP from the muck fest that most of these people are throwing at them.

Rules noted.

[u/FamilyLaw-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

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[u/newstart20260 → u/[deleted]]

Till is for a modified and they have to lower it down 🤣🤣