As pointed out in Bright v. Brown, 2018 BCSC 560, certain fundamental principles of law apply to all child support matters: 1. a parent-child relationship is a fiduciary relationship of presumed dependency and the obligation of both parents to support the child arises at birth; 2. parents have a joint and ongoing legal obligation to support their children in a way that is commensurate to their income; 3. child support is the right of the child, not of the parent seeking support on the child's behalf; 4. support payments are based on earning capacity are not just on what a parent actually earns; 5. as a result, a parent has a legal obligation to earn as much he or she is reasonably capable of earning so the children can receive an appropriate level of support; 6. a parent does not fulfil his/her obligation to his/her children if (s)he does not increase child support payments when his/her income increases significantly; 7. for reasons of predictability and consistency, parliament has mandated the determination of a spouse's annual income for child support purposes to be made with reference to "total income" in the income tax return as adjusted, i.e. income not capital (or capital assets); 8. a payor is not generally expected to sell capital assets such as a home for the purpose of generating income from which to pay support; 9. s. 19 of the Guidelines provides a non-exhaustive list of circumstances in which the court can exercise its discretion to impute income to a spouse for child support purposes; and 10. such circumstances include situations where the spouse is intentionally under-employed or unemployed or where a spouse is not reasonably utilizing property to generate income.
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