Because alimony (spousal support) and child support amounts are based largely on income, an expert’s opinion on earning potential can have a big impact on your divorce settlement or award. Learn what a vocational expert’s analysis is and how it can affect your divorce case.
What Is a Vocational Expert?
A vocational expert (also called a “vocational evaluator”) is trained to determine earning capacity (how much income an individual can earn) based on job skills, work history, education, and jobs available in the local area. In a divorce, a vocational expert’s job is to give the court a clear picture of what you or your spouse should be earning now and in the future.
If you’re divorcing and you’re asking for child support, spousal support, or both, you might hire a vocational expert to bolster your case—especially if your spouse is claiming an inability to pay the amount of support you’re requesting. Similarly, you could hire one of these experts if you’re being asked to pay support, but you don’t think your spouse is earning up to potential.
Vocational experts might also be brought in after a divorce, when either spouse wants to change the amount of child support or alimony in the previous order, based on a claim that circumstances have changed.
The vocational evaluator will offer an expert opinion on your spouse’s earning potential after reviewing your spouse’s:
- training
- job skills
- historical earnings, and
- employment history.
If there’s a slow economy or limited job market, the expert will take that into account in their analysis.
How Can a Vocational Expert Help My Case?
You might be reluctant to add another professional’s bill to the costs of your divorce or post-divorce proceeding to change (modify) support. However, a vocational expert could potentially save you money in the long run.
For example, suppose your spouse is responsible for alimony and child support but claims a sudden inability to work or earn wages. A vocational expert can provide an unbiased assessment of your spouse’s true earning power.
A spouse or ex might intentionally reduce income to lower support obligations—for example, by quitting a high-paying corporate job to work at a fast-food restaurant. But "deadbeat spouses'" efforts to reduce child or spousal support will usually backfire when vocational experts are brought in because they’re trained to look for underhanded attempts to limit earnings.
A vocational expert’s analysis will show a judge what a spouse should be earning. If it turns out that one spouse could be making more, a judge can “impute” income, or assign an additional income amount to reflect what that spouse should be earning. Child support and spousal support obligations would then be based on the imputed wages, rather than actual earnings.
You might choose to hire a vocational expert to assess your own earning potential as well. For instance, if you've been out of the job market for a while to raise young children, your ability to earn right away might be hampered. A vocational evaluator would consider your circumstances when determining how much you should be able to earn in the near future, as well as the steps needed to reach your full earning potential and how long it could take to reach that point.
A vocational analysis like this can help your case if your spouse is trying to impute an unreasonably high salary to you. Your vocational expert can show the judge that you’d realistically earn a lot less, at least in the near future.
Plus, a vocational analysis can give you an idea of what careers and salary expectations are available to you based on your education and work history, as well as the kind of training or education that could help improve your earning potential.
How Will a Vocational Expert’s Opinion Affect Support?
A judge isn’t bound by a vocational expert’s opinion, but it's usually highly persuasive. If you disagree with it, you’ll need to provide evidence to refute it. That evidence might consist of a report from your own expert—which is why some divorce cases involve “dueling experts.” When that happens, it will be up to the judge to decide which expert is more persuasive. In any case, the judge will always give serious consideration to the expert opinion(s).
If a judge imputes income to either spouse (based on the vocational expert’s assessment), that will probably result in a higher or lower amount of support. But if the vocational expert’s report says the job market is tough and a spouse's long-term prospects are limited, a judge might not change support amounts and could even reduce them based on that opinion.
In some cases, when vocational experts believe that spouses are earning below their potential, judges can order unemployed or underemployed spouses to begin seeking work (or better-paying work) and report back on those search efforts. For spouses without good job skills, judges might order them to get appropriate training (as identified by the vocational expert). However, judges usually don’t order parents who are caring for very young children to get back to work right away.
A vocational expert’s opinion could also encourage you and your spouse to reach a settlement agreement and avoid the expense and time of a trial.
The Value of Having a Vocational Expert’s Analysis
Vocational experts can provide the court with important employment, salary, and earning information. This expertise can be extremely helpful, especially if you think your spouse could be earning more. Because support figures are largely based on both spouses’ incomes, it’s critical to have an accurate salary figure for both spouses in a divorce.
The impact of a vocational evaluation will depend on the facts of each case. If you have specific questions about your own divorce, you should contact an experienced family law attorney in your area.