Lorne MacLean BC SSAG support and spousal support guidelines lawyer, using the with child support spousal support advisory guideline formula, recently succeeded in obtaining a lucrative BC Spousal Support Advisory guideline ” SSAG” and BC child support guidelines award on behalf of his client, the wife, in a complex and high net worth BC guidelines and BC child support guidelines proceeding where a BC child support award of $8771 retroactive for 13 months (plus private school and extracurricular fess of roughly $3000 monthly) and a BC advisory guidelines award of $17714 was ordered meaning the combined monthly payments of advisory guidelines support and child support approached $30,000 per month.
The award ranks as one of the highest court BC spousal support awards in BC since the SSAG spousal support calculations came into effect. Mr. MacLean succeeded in having the court use all of the companies pre-tax profits for the SSAG calculation based on BCCA law from the cases of Klukas and Teja, defeating the husband’s support claim that double dipping applied to BC support and a lower BC spousal and BC child support payment should thus be paid, blocking any $350,000 cap argument where BC spousal support is not increased on high salaries above $350,000 per year and finally in having the child support portion of the order made retroactive so a large lump sum payment was received for the children’s benefit.
We were delighted to have achieved such a generous BC spousal support and BC child support result for our BC family law client.
For privacy reasons the case is referred to as A.R.J. v. Z.S.J. [2009] B.C.J. No. 2393, B.C.S.C. The brief facts are:
- Married for 16 years.
- Two children.
- Husband, a surgeon, was sole director and equal shareholder in his professional services corporation.
- A personal services corporation unlike a company involved in a riskier or more capital intensive manufacturing business, generally speaking, does not require significant injections of capital in order to operate.
- Citing our Appellate case authority Mr Justice Savage determined that in the absence of legitimate calls on the pre-tax corporate income of a company, children and a spouse are entitled to support based on the full income available to the payor spouse.
- The double-dipping argument was rejected as it was the income earning capacity of the payor that gave rise to the assets in the company and this argument was not valid.
- No $350,000 cap would be used for the husband’s income which would have drastically lowered the wife’s support.
We look forward to helping high net worth spouses involved in complex family law cases.
