I recently tried a child support and spousal support case in Orange County Superior Court. I represented father who had recently been laid off from a mid-level management position. Father had been previously ordered to pay $2,500 of child support and $1500 spousal support on a monthly basis. As soon as he notified me of his being laid off we immediately filed an order to show cause to lower his support to zero.

Mother did delay his order to show cause, and her attorney made some excuse that she was not available, so the hearing was postponed for about a month. Once the matter came to hearing the other attorney refused any efforts to resolve the matter informally, she insisted that my client could be employed and she refused to accept that he was laid off, so we immediately took the matter to hearing. The judge considered my clients job loss, and I had prepared my client for questioning by opposing counsel so that he was prepared to respond to the questioning by wife’s attorney and the court.

The court did consider my client having been terminated, and considered that he was being paid approximately 2,000 a month in unemployment benefits. When at court we discovered that the wife had also lost her part-time employment (she had been earning approximately $1,200 a month) and also learned through my vigorous questioning that she was now cohabitating with a man and based on this the court immediately reduced her spousal support to zero. And the court reduced my client’s child support to approximately $120.00 per month retroactive to the date we had filed.

That’s why it so important to file an order to show cause to reduce support immediately when you are laid off or terminated, because the court can go back to the date of filing when they reduce your support. One interesting thing to note, that to me shows that gender bias is alive and well in our court system, is that my client, the male, was ordered to apply to no less than 10 positions per week, but the court didn’t even think to order his ex wife to seek employment.

It was only after I strenuously argued that wife had a duty to seek employment as well that the court ordered her to apply to at least 5 positions per week (as opposed to husband applying for 10 a week)! Go figure, I guess the system tends to still favor women?

• NOTE
  From time to time I will report as to certain results that I have obtained in a particular case. While your case may have facts that are different than those I discuss, and no particular result in a particular case guarantees that you would obtain the same result in your case, I feel that discussing actual court cases may give you insight as to how the system works.
• In order to protect the anonymity of my clients, I have changed their identities as well as other identifying information, but the basic fact pattern is an accurate representation as to what actually occurred in court.