My wife of 13 years has found a Internet boyfriend and ran off to northern California hiding with our 4 young kids. After making a dumb mistake posting pictures on a web site I was able to get full temp. custody of them with no visitation. My question is since she was a stay at home mom for the last 6 years how does the court determine how much child support she will have to pay or will she? I make around $75,000.00 a year and she has made no income for the last 6 years. Before that she was very successfully employed at a large company as middle management and made around $50,000.00 a year back in 2002.

Mike

They will probably apply the statutory minimum.

Yes, most areas have some min amount for people who are not working.

Actually... it may get worse. The court doesn't think that disrupting kids' lives is in their best interest. Since she was a stay-at-home mom, the courts are likely to grant her physical custody since she has been the children's primary care-giver for the last 6 years. And, they may require you to pay spousal support, so that she can continue to live in the life that she is accustomed to: that of a stay-at-home mother. (This came up a lot in divorce cases out in Silicon Valley, where guys found out that staying at work 10+ hours a day in order to make the money you need to provide an upper-middle-class lifestyle for your family got held against them when custody orders were made.)

On the other hand, the court isn't keen on disrupting kids' lives, so her moving them away from school, family, and friends is going to go against her.

I'd be looking at getting a good lawyer, if I were you.

The soon to be x has had my children living at a ranch that is owned by a porn producer.
Her new boyfriend also owns porn sites. I found out about this two weeks after she ran off with them. The court has all proof of this thanks to my wife posting pictures on the internet. I have more to come up in court next week but my lawyer thinks we have a solid case. I just have not had the chance to ask her about the child support issue yet.

Mike

I'm glad to hear that you have a lawyer. I would bet that you have a solid case being that you were already given temp custody. As said the minimum support would probably be assigned because it has been so long since she has had a job. If she gets a job that makes a lot more money (not hard to do since she is making zero but it would still have to be over min wage) then you can go back to court to ask for a modification based on the large increase in her earnings.