Transcript:
Pamela Elaine Nichols: My husband and I have been married for five years. I earned the highest income between us. He has intentionally not worked in high paying jobs although he could have because he wanted to devote time to building his own business. That business has never taken off. I don’t want to pay him alimony for sitting on his butt for five years. Am I obligated to support a man who hasn’t pulled his weight? Sincerely not giving him a dime
Lenore Myers: So, he might have been able to do more, but…… but you might not be able to prove that.
You might have thought he needed to go out and get a better job. But if he didn’t prove that he was had that earning capacity at any point in his life. I think you might be stuck.
Pamela Elaine Nichols: So define earning capacity for us. When you use that term, what does it mean?
Lenore Myers: It means…. what you could possibly earn based on your education, experience, and abilities. The thing is you might have a doctorate in something amazing, but it doesn’t necessarily pay a lot. It might be that all it pays is a stipend from a college. So, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have that earning capacity.
Or… Maybe you were a big executive… 15 years ago, but you stayed at home to raise the children. And now you have to get back in the workforce.
You’ve lost your connections. You’ve lost your experience. You know, people have already put in time and jumped ahead of you. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can just step right in and earn what you used to earn.
So it really… You have to look at everything just not the paycheck. It could be, you know, like in some cases I’ve had someone was making tons of money, was really, really smart, but then they had a traumatic brain injury. So they’re not going to be able to come back. They’re not going to be able to do what they used to do.
Pamela Elaine Nichols: Okay. So let me play the devil’s advocate on behalf of this person who wrote in. Okay. So she’s saying her husband could have worked at his… earned at his capacity, but intentionally did not. So let’s say I’m going to make it up. I don’t know her actual story but let’s say that he was a….. PhD, a psychologist. Okay? And he could have gotten well-paying jobs over six figures, but he chose instead to work as a clerk at Walmart.
So, he’s really working well below his capacity intellectually and financially. Does she have any recourse here?
Lenore Myers: Well certainly, I mean. There’s going to be the conjecture that he could earn more. So in those situations, someone would get an expert to say “well based on… their experience or their education… or their age… they should even at a starting position be getting… “Making this amount of money. Not minimum wage.”
You could present that at court and that is earning capacity. It’s not necessarily what you’re you get in your paycheck. It’s what you have the capability of earning. So, you do have recourse. It’s expensive to sometimes get the experts, but… in some courts, the hearing officer will go on Monster.com and say, “Okay, well, someone with your earning capacity, your experience, and your education, you would have this earning capacity, and I’m going to imputee. I’m going to say this is what you should be earning even if all you’re doing is going and working at Walmart as a clerk.”
