I do not understand the meaning of this, could someone kindly turn this into common language?
"Imputed income to a party who is voluntarily unemployed or voluntarily under-employed; provided that income may not be imputed to the custodial parent when a child is not in school, child care services are not available and the cost of such child care services are not included in the computation and provided further, that any consideration of imputed income based on a change in a party's employment shall be evaluated with consideration of the good faith and reasonableness of employment decisions made by the party;"
Imputed income is income other than actual income. If a party says he or she only makes $1,000 per year but the party is voluntarily under-employed, then the court can impute income of $10,000 per year if that is what the party could make if fully employed.
Voluntarily unemployed is the person who chooses not to work. That is fine for the person, but unacceptable when there is a support obligation. The court will impute income and calculate support as if the person were fully employed.
Voluntarily under-employed is the board certified neurosurgeon who takes a job as a school nurse. Being a school nurse is certainly honorable and fine employment for one appropriately qualified, however the surgeon has skills that command greater income.
The middle phrase means the court cannot impute income to a parent with custody of a child unless the child is in school or daycare is available. If income is imputed, then the cost of daycare has to be included in the support calculation.
The final phrase looks at the good faith and reasonableness of the employment decisions. The neurosurgeon who takes the school nurse job to run down his or her income in order to minimize his or her support obligation is probably acting in bad faith and being unreasonable. The neurosurgeon who by virtue of injury or illness lacks the physical ability to practice neurosurgery but who is fully competent in some practice of medicine that pays less may be acting in good faith and reasonably.
This means exactly what it says. I don't know how to put it in simplier terms other than by way of a hypothetical case example.
Say that there is a child support petition (case) pending with the court. In this imaginary case, mom and dad are not married, there is one biological child involved (and neither parent has any other children), the child is 4 years old and attends publicly funded (ie., free) pre-K school 5 days a week from 9am to noon, mom does not work at all and dad has worked construction his entire life and currently only has about 20 hours a week of construction work to do (at let's says a pay rate of $15 per hour).
Technically under the VA child support guidelines, child support would be calculated based on mom having a gross income of $0 per month and dad having a gross income of $1300 ($15 per hour x 20 hours per week=$300 per week x 52 weeks per year=$15,600 divided by 12 months = $1300 per month gross average). What the additional law you have cited in your question says in practice is that the judge CAN (not must) impute income to one or both of the parents in this particular scenario IF the judge determines based on the evidence of the particular case that one or both of the parents COULD be earning more money than they actually ARE earning.
Let's say in our hypothetical that when mom is asked to explain whay she isn't working her only answer is because she wants to be a full-time stay at home mom. To this the judge says no-go! Mom, you have a legal obligation to financially support this child just as the dad has. Say mom's last job before she voluntarily quit working to be a full-time mom paid her $10 per hour. This is how the imputed income would work:
Mom would be charged with earning $10 per hour from the hours of 9am-noon Monday through Friday (while junior is in pre-K for free) and charged with earning $5 an hour from the hours of noon to 5pm ($10 an hour for working minus $5 an hour to pay the local daycare center to babysit junior from noon to 5pm). This means that in determining how much child support dad will have to pay to mom for junior, the court is going to pretend that mom makes $400 per week minus $125 week for child care expenses (or $275 per week gross income). Mom is not going to be forced by the court to actually go out and get that job, but she will be charged with having that income for purposes of determining guideline child support.
In dad's case, the court might determine that dad has done everything he can to work full-time in the only job he is qualified to do and, do to the current market conditions, dad is not working 20 hours a week by choice and that it would not be possible for dad to find additional work at this time. If that were the court's finding, then the court would probably NOT impute income to dad and would instead use dad's actual income to determine dad's support obligation. By contrast, if the evidence were that there was plenty of full-time construction owrk to do but dad kept turning the work down because he likes to hit his favorite bar every day by 2pm, then the court might very well charge dad with $600 per week in income (rather than the $300 per week he is actually earning).
I hope that example helps.
