Figuring out what a party’s income is for the purpose of child support is one of the things you may fight about a lot, especially if one of the parties is self-employed or has a second job. According to FreeAdvice, identifying what is income and the pattern of income is not all that easy. Sometimes you look at bank statements to see how much the party is depositing or that the self-employed person is depositing.
Self-employed people very often do not pay themselves directly from the company very much money. Instead, they get the bulk of their compensation from dividends, distributions or something like that. So you really have to do some investigative work to see what goes into income for the purpose of child support. Generally, the court considers any sort of money that you get to be income. Very few things fall outside the scope of income when it comes to child support because the court is most concerned about protecting the kids and not too concerned about whether your job is a 40-hour a week or a 45-hour a week job.
So keep in mind that most courts in most situations will consider any sort of money coming in as income. But if you have to do overtime work and it is mandatory with your job, then that overtime will be included in your child support computation. Other areas that the courts may look at when determining what your income is are income from investments that you made. If you have published work and you are making money from book sales or from any intellectual property outside of your normal job, that is included in child support.
