Judges: Rose
Filed Date: 6/3/2010
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 11/1/2024
Appeal from an order of the Family Court of Essex County (Meyer, J.), entered December 17, 2008, which granted petitioner’s application, in a proceeding pursuant to Family Ct Act article 4, for modification of a prior child support order.
In November 2005, the parties stipulated that the child support obligation of petitioner (hereinafter the father) would be based upon imputed annual income of $28,667. Although the father was then essentially unemployed, two years earlier his income from a business of respondent (hereinafter the mother) had been approximately $60,000. Based on that prior income and the father’s hopes for future employment, the parties agreed to his annual income and the corresponding child support amount. This agreement was later incorporated, but not merged, into a judgment of divorce. In 2007, after the father’s attempts to obtain steady employment failed, he petitioned for a downward modification of child support. The Support Magistrate dismissed the petition for the father’s failure to show a sufficient change in circumstances, but Family Court reversed that determination and reduced the amount of child support after finding a sufficient change in circumstances in the father’s unsuccessful efforts to obtain employment and the depletion of his other financial resources. The mother appeals, arguing that because the father had been unemployed when he stipulated to the amount of child support, his continued unemployment does not constitute an unanticipated change in circumstances.
Peters, J.P., Stein, McCarthy and Garry, JJ., concur. Ordered . that the order is affirmed, without costs.