Canadian Child-Support Guidelines

September 6, 2007 by Walter Schneider.

Bruce wrote:

Good afternoon, I know that there is a child support table out there on the income you make before taxes and what you have to pay for child support.  Can you provide me with this?

Thanks

Bruce

Hello Bruce,

I assume that you are interested in the Canadian Child-Support Guidelines.

Here is some background information that you should read about those.

http://fathersforlife.org/articles/report/formula.htm

You can look up government information on the CS Guidelines at

http://www.justice.gc.ca/en/ps/sup/

More detailed government information on CS guidelines is at

http://www.justice.gc.ca/en/ps/sup/grl/glp.html

The guidelines are not law.  Judges do not have to follow them and can instead use their “judicial discretion.”  They can, over and above CS amounts based on the guidelines, award special allowances.  Moreover, they can “impute” your income  (impute: http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/impute), and postulate what you should be able to earn rather than base their CS awards on what you are able to earn (you should be entitled to have your CS amount calculated based on your average gross income as per the last three years’ income tax returns).

There is no legal limit on what you may be ordered to pay.  For that reason it has happened that at times CS amounts awarded exceeded the payer’s ability to pay by as much as or more than a factor of two (ultimately having caused a good number of payers to commit suicide).

Regards,

Walter Schneider
http://fathersforlife.org

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