Support Math, Not the Whole Custody Fight

Key cases

• Cook v. Losnegard, 228 Ariz. 202 (App. 2011)

  Due process requires notice and an opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner before a court modifies child support. Where the family court told the parties at the start of a custody-modification trial that it would not hear evidence on modifying support, and then modified support in its ruling anyway, the mother did not receive adequate notice and an opportunity to be heard on support issues such as childcare costs, so the modified support order was vacated and remanded. Incomes that had been fully and fairly litigated at trial were not to be reopened on remand unless they had changed since trial. The court also held there was no error in using the father's actual income rather than imputing a higher income, because the evidence supported finding that his relocation, job change and resulting income reduction were reasonable.

• Engel v. Landman, 221 Ariz. 504 (App. 2009)

  Applying the former Arizona Child Support Guidelines, the court held that the trial court erred by attributing hypothetical income and childcare expenses to a voluntarily unemployed parent, because the Guidelines do not support using that attribution to increase the burden on the employed parent. Because the parents' combined income already exceeded the Guidelines' maximum, the attributed childcare raised the total obligation and the father's share, and nothing in the Guidelines lets a parent use hypothetical attribution to transform a decision to remain unemployed into an increase in child support received. The current Guidelines (for orders entered after January 1, 2022) direct the court, when a parent is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed with reasonable cause, to consider whether the decision and its benefits outweigh the effect of the reduced income on the child's best interests, and the childcare adjustment is for the amount paid for childcare so a parent can work or seek employment. Engel did not bar attributing income to a voluntarily unemployed parent; it recognized the trial court 'properly could have found' that the mother's decision to stay home was in the children's best interests, and reversed only because attribution increased the support she received. Under the current Guidelines the court may decline to attribute income when, among other examples, a parent is the caretaker of a young child common to the parties and the cost of childcare is prohibitive (Guidelines § II.A.5.b.iv), and an attributed amount must be identified as attributed on the worksheet and in the order (§ II.A.4.c).