Opinion ID: 2582008
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Amount of Income Imputed to Nunley Was Reasonable Given his Skills, Education, and Experience.

Text: Nunley also contests the amount of income imputed to him by CSED and claims that it is unrealistic to assume that he could earn $15,010 per year. In support of this argument he cites language in Bendixen stating that the wording of Civil Rule 90.3 obviously presupposes that some prospect of earning income or some opportunity to find employment actually exists. [28] He also cites Bostic v. State, [29] in which this court overturned a child support determination because the obligor parent did not have notice that voluntary underemployment would be an issue at the formal hearing and because the record did not support the hearing officer's determination that the parent could earn a salary of $40,000. [30] Nunley's reliance on these cases is misplaced. In Bendixen, we held that an obligor parent's incarceration did not amount to voluntarily unemployment. [31] Nunley was not incarcerated at the time of the hearing and CSED did not rely on his criminal history to support its finding of voluntarily underemployment. And unlike the obligor parent in Bostic, Nunley knew that voluntary underemployment would be at issue during the formal hearing, and the income imputed to him was based upon his actual earnings. CSED increased Nunley's child support obligation from $50 per month, the amount he was required to pay while he was incarcerated, to $282 per month based upon his reported earnings in the first quarter of 1994. This support amount was based upon an extrapolated annual income of $15,010 and an obligation to support two children. Informal Conference Officer Berg declined to modify this amount following an informal conference with Nunley in 1994, though the department later reduced the support obligation to $209 per month after it determined that Nunley was not the father of Vansia Nunley's daughter, Kiana. After a formal hearing in 2001, Revenue Hearing Examiner Howard found that Nunley's actual work history provided the best estimate of his earning capacity and she affirmed CSED's support obligation of $209 per month based upon an annual income of $15,010. Deputy Commissioner Persily noted that this income works out to just $7.22 per hour on a forty-hour week, which is a reasonable wage for someone of Nunley's age and experience. In fact, this hourly wage is consistent with Nunley's reported hourly earnings as a farm laborer and is only barely above Alaska's minimum wage of $7.15 per hour. [32] Nunley is a trained welder, and he has work experience as an agricultural worker and laborer, carpenter, pipefitter, and truck driver. While any imputation of income is somewhat speculative, the department reasonably relied upon Nunley's actual earnings to determine his potential income. Had CSED relied upon reported earnings from a period when Nunley made a significantly higher hourly wage than he had historically earned, or than he could reasonably expect to earn in the future, Nunley might have grounds to attack the support calculation. But he provides no credible evidence to rebut CSED's finding in this case that he is capable of earning barely above minimum wage.