A Parent Quits Work To Take Care of New Family?

Alternatively, therefore, courts may exercise discretion to fill the void by basing the child support obligation on the formerly employed/now-unemployed parent’s earning capacity (assuming that approach would otherwise be proper under the facts). [Marriage of Paulin (1996) 46 CA4th 1378 —custodial parent’s monthly income from prior employment properly considered where she had voluntarily quit work upon remarriage and offered no concrete proof of efforts to find new comparable employment]

“When child support is ordered at a time when both parents are employed and thereafter one arbitrarily decides to stop working, perhaps because of remarriage to someone with significant income, the court must possess the discretion to consider that parent’s earning capacity in ordering child support … Otherwise, one parent by a unilateral decision could eliminate his or her own responsibility to contribute to the support of the child, causing the entire burden of supporting the child to fall upon the employed parent.”