What if the Obligor is Intentionally Unemployed?
Section 154.066 of the Texas Family Code reads:
If the actual income of the obligor is significantly less than what the obligor could earn because of intentional unemployment or underemployment, the court may apply the support guidelines to the earning potential of the obligor.
This provision is, of course, designed to enable a court to force a recalcitrant obligor to pay child support.
For that reason, the Fifth District Court of Appeals recently held that an obligee has the burden to prove that the obligor is intentionally unemployed. In the Interest of K.N.C., 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 9374 (Tex. App. - Dallas Dec. 17, 2008, n.p.h.). In this case, the father had been seriously injured in a car wreck. When he and his wife divorced, the father received disability benefits, as did the parties' two children.
The trial court ordered the father to pay child support based on the amount the father received as disability payments. But the court of appeals disagreed. There was no evidence that the father quit a job to avoid paying child support. Further, that the obligor applied for a city job two years earlier constituted insufficient evidence to show intentional unemployment when the parties did not dispute that the obligor previously had been seriously injured in an automobile accident and unemployed since that time.
