Opinion ID: 1166753
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Reexamining the Status of Incarcerated Parents

Text: The superior court reasoned that Michael's incarceration for a crime was tantamount to voluntary unemployment because crimes are willful conduct, just as voluntary unemployment is willful conduct. But the court's reasoning overlooks significant differences between the willfulness involved in committing a crime and that required to support a finding of voluntary underemployment. Not every voluntary act that has negative economic consequences amounts to voluntary unemployment. The commentary to Rule 90.3 strongly suggests that, to be considered voluntarily unemployed, a parent must engage in voluntary conduct for the purpose of becoming or remaining unemployed. Thus, the commentary advises that the imputed earnings of voluntarily unemployed parents should be based on their potential income and job opportunities. [11] This wording obviously presupposes that some prospect of earning income or some opportunity to find employment actually exists. Equating incarceration with voluntary unemployment thus seems inconsistent with Rule 90.3's commentary. It also seems to cut against the grain of our own case law. Although we have held that Rule 90.3 supersedes Clemans, [12] and so have acknowledged the need to enforce the rule's express requirement of minimal support payments when that requirement conflicts with that decision, [13] we have never specifically disavowed Clemans itself; nor have we questioned its underlying policies. [14] To the contrary, just three years ago in A.H. v. W.P., [15] we forbade imputing income to a parent who had no actual earning capacity. [16] Moreover, the previous year, when we decided in Douglas that Rule 90.3 required an incarcerated parent to pay $50 per month in child support regardless of her ability to afford the payment, we specifically rejected an argument urging us to treat incarcerated parents differently than other indigent parents: [T]he relevant question is not whether Douglas has prospective sources of income from which to pay support, but whether there is any basis in Rule 90.3 for treating indigent incarcerated parents differently from other indigent parents who are subject to the rule. We conclude that there is not. [17] Interpreting voluntary unemployment to include joblessness stemming from incarceration would thus conflict not only with the spirit of Clemans but also with our more recent decisions in A.H. and Douglas. These considerations lead us to conclude that the superior court erred in refusing to modify Michael's child support payments on the sole ground that his incarceration amounted to voluntary unemployment. Although incarceration is often a foreseeable consequence of criminal misconduct and all criminal acts are in some sense voluntary, non-custodial parents who engage in criminal misconduct seldom desire the enforced unemployment that accompanies incarceration; nor can they alter their situation; and, in stark contrast to parents who consciously choose to remain unemployed, jailed parents rarely have any actual job prospects or potential income. Equating incarceration to voluntary unemployment would require us to ignore these significant, real-life distinctions. To be sure, before securing a reduction in child support payments, Michael will have to prove that he has suffered more than a temporary or insubstantial setback in earnings as a result of his incarceration. [18] And nothing precludes the superior court from considering the circumstances surrounding Michael's incarceration to the extent that they might contribute to a case-specific finding of exceptional circumstances warranting departure from Rule 90.3's child support guidelines. [19] But here, as in Douglas, Rule 90.3 provides no basis for automatically treating incarcerated parents differently from other categories of indigent parents who are subject to the same rule.