You Need a Vocational Specialist for Both Spouses in a Divorce, Here's Why

As a practicing family lawyer, you know that among the many things that need to be sorted out in a divorce, a major piece is spousal maintenance and alimony. The number that you arrive at for those matters in your divorce cases depends on the earning capacity of each spouse and parent.

Back in the day, a vocational specialist – who is an expert in providing an opinion on earning capacity – was normally brought in to give an assessment of a woman and mother’s earning capacity. That is because the mother had traditionally been the person to take on the lion’s share of child-rearing duties. In marriages without children, the woman traditionally were lower-wage earners in the household.  

Those days, however, are long gone. Many households include men who primarily handle child-rearing, and are the lower wage-earning partner between the two. Thus, divorce cases today require that both sides obtain an assessment of the other partner’s earning capability.

In this article, I cover primary reasons why each side to divorce needs to employ a vocational specialist. If, after reading this article, you have more questions about a vocational specialist for your own divorce clients message me, I welcome any questions you might have.

Level the Playing Field

As vocational experts, we have seen it all with regard to certain tricks that people will play to manipulate their perceived income. Moreover, we are able to investigate more deeply the root cause of certain perceived earning capacity deficiencies.  

Thus, while you, as a busy attorney, are trying your best just to get the top-sheet income numbers and benefit requirements correct, a vocational specialist has the knowledge and experience to provide some much-needed additional dimension to those numbers. With some information behind earning capacity numbers, you might find that you have better arguments to make that will increase the income for your client, and/or benefits for the children at issue.

Here are some examples of tactics often used by divorcing partners. A higher-earning spouse may do their level best to show that they do not have money to pay spousal or child support. Such individuals:

·      Have been known to quit their job to avoid paying support

·      Have accepted a lower-paying title to minimize support

·      Assert that economic conditions have dramatically altered their earning potential

In many cases, the lower-earning spouse is unable to pierce through the tactics of the other to show that the higher-earning spouse is simply trying to hide his or her income.

  Vocational specialists are able to cut through such devious strategies. A vocational specialist’s job is to assess the whole person to find out which careers are a best fit, including their:

 ·      Education

·      Interests

·      Skills

·      Experience

·      Knowledge 

A specialist will also engage in a labor market analysis to determine both a person’s ability to get a job and what he or she can expect to earn.The vocational specialist, through their thorough analysis, can account for factors such as the time one spouse may have been out of the workforce, or an injury or illness that kept a spouse from working in their chosen field.

In sum, the value that vocational specialists bring to a divorce case is substantial. They can “pull the rug out” from any type of tactic that people may use to try to avoid their financial obligations, particularly their obligations to their children.

Another reason to have a vocational specialist as part of your divorce legal team is because the other side will likely do the same. Thus, in contentious divorce cases, both sides will bring a vocational specialist so that he or she can both assess the other party’s earning capacity, and find questionable conclusions in the other party’s expert report. 

As you know, the more knowledge you have about the facts in your case, the better you will be at litigating that case. In short, knowledge is power. Vocational specialists add value by giving you more information and more facts about your case.