Determining Income

A CJER Online Course

To determine child or spousal support in a family law proceeding, you must first calculate the net disposable income available for support. You do that by:

• Calculating each parent’s annual gross income
• Excluding legally exempt income
• Subtracting allowable deductions

You will learn about determining income in this online course. There are several programs certified by the Judicial Council that will assist you in performing these calculations. With those figures in hand, you can determine whether to award child and spousal support. For further discussion of these programs and the law governing support, see the online course Child and Spousal Support.

This course is the third in a series of online courses for family court bench officers. Other available courses are:

• Calendar Management in Family Court
• Custody and Visitation
• Child and Spousal Support
• Characterizing Property
• Dividing Property

Learning Goals

As a result of this course, you will be able to:

• List sources of annual gross income
• Identify when a parent’s earning capacity may be considered
• Recognize special income sources, such as fluctuating income, overtime, and income imputed from assets
• State exclusions from gross income
• Discuss deductions from gross income, such as taxes, health insurance premiums, and support payments
• Explain limitations on considering income from a new spouse or nonmarital partner
• Apply rules for determining income to hypothetical situations
• Define terms unique to determining income in family court

This course contains various activities and quizzes. These are training exercises for your own practice only; no record is made of any of your responses to the course activities or quizzes.

Your feedback is important to us for the development of future courses. After finishing this course, please take a few minutes to complete the evaluation form. After completing the evaluation, you may print a certificate of completion. This course will help satisfy your continuing education needs.

Click on How to Use below or plunge directly into the course by clicking on any section title in the table of contents on the left, or simply click next below.