More Money, More Child Support: Court refuses to put cap on payor father’s income

In Lantz v Lantz, 2023 ONSC 4220, a father applied to reduce his retroactive child support payment.

In this case, the parties had attended mediation/arbitration on the issue of child support for November 2020 through until December 2022. The parties ultimately consented to a Final Arbitration Award. When the parties entered into the Final Arbitration Award, the father was an equity partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP, a large Toronto law firm. Because of how the father was paid, the parties did not know when they consented to the Final Award what his income would be for 2020, so they agreed that, for support purposes, it would be $1.65MM subject to later adjustment based on his actual income. Shortly after the award was granted the father’s income was actually significantly higher than it was projected to be at $2.1MM.

For the purposes of calculating his child support obligations the father sought a cap on his income and argued that paying child support on anything higher than $1.6MM would result in child support payments that were well beyond the needs of the children, and rather than supporting the children his child support would be tantamount to a wealth transfer.

The justice dismissed the father’s application, noting that “the federal child support regime contemplates that the family as a whole – including the children – will share the rising and falling fortunes of the payor parent.”

The court noted that the father’s application was a unique application as the father was seeking to reduce the amount of child support payable based on an increase in his income. The judge commented that they were unable to find any case law or legal authorities on such an application.

The justice refused to delve deep into the substance of the case finding that the father’s application failed at the first stage --- there was no material change in circumstance to justify re-opening child support. The Final Award was clear and required the father to pay child support on his actual income. The Award also had built-in clauses that could be triggered with fluctuations in the father’s income. The justice concluded that if it were known at the time of the Final Award that the father’s income would increased, this likely would not have resulted in a different Award.

The justice further ordered that certain corporate write offs claimed through the father’s company should be added back into the father’s personal income for the purpose of calculating child support.

The father went into the court appearance asking for his total child support payments to be set at $103,196. The mother was seeking for the father’s total child support payments to be set at $227,821.00. The justice ordered the father to pay child support in the total amount of $219,688.00.

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