Apparently, a recent Missouri court decision has determined that it’s your obligation, after a divorce, to maximize your income to fund your court-anointed financial duties:
If you are well paid, a parent and living in Missouri, pay special attention to this column.
That’s because a recent ruling by the Missouri Court of Appeals seems to invite local courts to compel divorced parents to seek work anywhere in the world if doing so would maximize the payments they could make in support of their children and ex-spouses.
In Payne v Payne, which originated in St. Louis County, the husband had been employed as an oil trader at the time of his divorce. Based on yearly earnings of $141,000, the court set child and spousal support payments totaling nearly $36,000 per year. Unfortunately for Mr. Payne, he lost his job shortly after his divorce.
Four months later, the husband asked the court to reduce his support obligations, contending he had been unable to find a comparable job in his field in St. Louis or elsewhere, despite search efforts that reached across the nation and overseas. To support himself, he had started an antique business but was generating far less income than he had earned previously.
The courts decided that Mr. Payne had to continue working in his highly paid field, even if it meant relocating. The courts were going to dictate Mr. Payne’s career and job choices, under the threat of jail time for contempt no doubt.
The lower court’s decision was overturned on appeal, but still, this intervention of the courts on a citizen’s career choice is galling and chilling. And frighteningly potentially prescient.
