pegleg_legal made the comment "Best time to divorce is when you're in a shitty financial position." YellowFever46 warned "Everyone please ignore pegleg_legal" and then I wrote "I haven't read all of pegleg_legal's comments, but I'm pretty sure 'Best time to divorce is when you're in a shitty financial position' is correct." I got divorced when I was in shitty financial position and didn't have to pay any alimony. I think it would have been very different if I had gotten divorced later on, after my fortunes turned around. I also had higher income at a previous point in time, but my income was not imputed (I don't want to describe my divorce in detail, but if you knew the details, you would most likely agree that it makes sense that my income was not imputed).

YellowFever46 described the following hypothetical situation and claimed that the husband's income would be imputed to $250,000:

So what if you were working at a job for the first 15 years or your marriage making $250,000 per year. Then you get fired and can only find a job paying $75,000……so you work that for 2 years but you’re hurting financially because your wife was a stay at home mom raising your 3 kids. You were all accustomed to the $250,000 lifestyle and now you have amassed huge amounts of debt in the range of $300,000. After 2 years at your $75k job you decide to file for divorce or she decides to file (either way doesn’t matter).

He also wrote: "Bottom line is income imputation is very fair and is done all the time. If a guy quits his job or is fired his income will be imputed….even if you don’t understand why or don’t like it."

First of all, do you think it would be fair to impute the husband's income to $250,000 in this situation?

I am looking for your personal opinion and I recognize whether or not you think something is fair has nothing to do with outcomes produced by our court system. What one person thinks is fair, another person may think is unfair. YellowFever46 thinks income imputation is "very fair."

Secondly, do you think a judge would impute his income to $250,000 in this situation?

I think in this example the husband would have a good argument that $75,000 would be the appropriate income level for support calculations since that had been his level for the past 2 years. YellowFever46 wrote "can only find a job paying $75,000." I think if the husband could document that the $75K job was all he could find, that would be convincing evidence. If his income suddenly dropped from $250,000 to $75,000 just a few months before the divorce, I could see how it would look like he was trying to game the system, and I would expect his income to be imputed unless a judge were to accept his justification for the decline in income.

In writing "the husband would have a good argument that $75,000 would be the appropriate income level for support calculations since that had been his level for the past 2 years" all I'm saying is that he would have a good argument, not that his argument would necessarily be accepted by a judge. Also, I'm not saying that the "convincing evidence" would necessarily convince a judge.