Difference between revisions of "Basic Principles of Spousal Support"

You can visit DIVORCEmate’s website for their free spousal support calculator, [http://mysupportcalculator.ca mysupportcalculator.ca].  This calculator is very good for simple situations, but if there is anything complicated about your circumstances you may want to meet with a lawyer who has bought DIVORCEmate’s expensive commercial software.  The lawyer should be able to give you some fairly fine-tuned numbers.  This chapter’s section on the [[Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines]] discusses the Advisory Guidelines formulas in a lot more detail.  

In addition to considering the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines, it is important that each party prepare a sworn financial statement whether a court proceeding has been started or not.  In provincial court, the Financial Statement is called a [[PCFR Form 4 Financial Statement|Form 4]] and in Supreme Court, the Financial Statement is called a [[Form F8 Financial Statement|Form F8]].  The financial statement sets out each party’s income and assets, expenses and liabilities.  

When a spousal support calculation is done by the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines, the calculation sets out three amounts of possible spousal support: a low amount, a mid amount and a high amount ([http://mysupportcalculator.ca/ mysupportcalculator.ca] only provides the high and low amounts, not the mid amount of the range).  There can be hundreds of dollars difference between the low and high amounts of spousal support.  The expenses of the parties that are set out in their financial statements can help decide whether spousal support should be at the low amount, the mid amount, the high amount or even outside of the amounts suggested by the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines entirely.   

Ideally, a spousal support payment will leave both parties (not just the party who earns more money) with enough to look after their living expenses.  The court will not bankrupt a payor in order to meet the dependent spouse’s needs. In many cases, this mean that both parties must adjust their standard of living to be able to live within the pool of income available to them. The parties’ expenses on their financial statement can help show how much money each party needs to meet their living expenses and how much money the payor has left over to pay spousal support after their  

reasonable monthly living expenses for things like rent, utilities, groceries and so forth are met.