If you’re involved with either receiving or paying child support, you’ve probably heard about the concept of imputing income to a non-working parent. In Colorado, the amount one pays in child support is decided by a few factors, with one of the major ones being how much monthly gross income each parent receives. But what happens when one parent just stops working or takes part-time work that earns less than they would have otherwise made?

Under Colorado Revised Statutes §14-10-115, Colorado courts have long been permitted to attribute income to a parent who they find is either voluntarily not working at all or not working as much as they reasonably could be. No more playing the “I’ll just quit and not have to pay support” game. This ability to impute income, however, has been both bane and blessing. For parents truly trying but struggling to find good work, the statute has sometimes been used to their detriment, imputing a full 40-hour work week and 52-week year of income, which could then either greatly reduce the support received (if they are the receiving parent) or even land them with an unbending support order that mounts and gains interest.

What changed in 2023 for non-working parents?

In 2023, the Colorado legislature updated the statute to include a bit more flexibility and leniency for those non-working parents. In subsection (5)(b.5)(II), the court now first considers the “typical hours available to workers in the parent’s job sector.” If the court does not receive good information about what those typical hours would be, then the they will default to imputing only 32 hours/week of work and 50 weeks per year to the non-working parent, as opposed to 40 hours/week and 52 weeks per year.

What does this mean for working parents?

For a working parent, the same statute—C.R.S.§14-10-115—defines what all counts as income and what doesn’t. Income is generally pretty broad and includes most all types of money coming in. It can certainly feel (and sometimes is) unfair for the parent who is working to bear the brunt of the support, but it is important to remember that the statue is setup to ensure there are funds for the child or children. Yes, those funds are given to the other parent, and yes that parent then makes decision about spending, but ultimately, the intent is to provide for the child.

Now, one subsection—(5)(a)(II)—does exclude certain types of income for the working parent. This includes income from additional jobs that result in employment of more than 40 hours per week or more than “what would otherwise be considered to be full-time employment.” It is unclear whether the legislature considered changing this section to go hand-in-hand with the imputation section, but there appears to be a discrepancy now that they did not make such a change.

This could be a good time for working parents to bring this “what would otherwise be considered full-time” language back to the court’s attention. Defining what would is considered full-time employment in Colorado is not always straight-forward, and usually depends on an employee’s classification, but in some areas of Colorado’s Administrative Code, full-time is indeed defined as 32 hours, so an argument could potentially be made that a working parent’s income should also only include one job at 32 hours of pay. This is a novel argument, but one that might be ripe for consideration in fairness with the change to (5)(b.5)(II).