Overtime in income determination

[takingandsending]

Hi all. I am in process of divorcing uBPDw of 17 years. We are using collaborative divorce atty to try to  avoid litigation and have a 4 way meeting coming up next week (me, her, attorneys).

I have a question regarding calculation of income for child support and maintenance. My state includes overtime pay in calculations of annual income. I work as an engineer, and do receive overtime pay, but it is largely unpredictable, varies month to month and year to year, and generally adds $4000 - $6000 gross a year to my income.

Does anyone have any advice how I can present this to attorneys to avoid having a higher portion of my standard, non-overtime paycheck pulled when there is no guarantee that I will actually work the overtime in a given annual cycle?

[scraps66]

If you run the numbers $4-6000 a year will hardly affect your payments.  I don't know how to handle this, one way might be to just not mention it.  If they do these calcs properly, they will use your most recent tax return and a pay stub.  IF they do that your overtime from last year will be included. 

Be aware, I learned the expensive way, at some point down the road you could have to go back to court to adjust your support and if there is more overtime than you estimated you will have arrears to pay.  It doesn't seem like there is an exact, definitive way around this. 

Also be aware, many, many, many mistakes can be made with the CS calcs.  Some courthouses only use pay stubs.  Like mine.  I used to over withhold a ton so I would get a big tax return at the end of the year.  At the beginning my ex was getting a different job every year but not providing her new pay information.  So, two years alter I finally ketchup with her and we go to court to recalculate the last two years of child support.

At the beginning of the two year period we went in front of a Master that only did the calcs based on a p[ay stub - my pay with massive overwitholdings.  So the CS calculation was "artificially" lower than it should have been if they also used my tax returns.  So they recalculate the corrections for the two year period and it turns out I have massive arrears to pay due to now my correct pay accounting for my withholdings being used.  There were also other mistakes that my unprepared L made that added to my expense. 

In a round about way what I'm telling you - know how to do your own calculations before you go to court and double check everything.         

[takingandsending]

Should I propose that last 4-5 years of returns be used to average out what could be one heavier year of overtime? Last year I traveled more than usual and that is when most of my overtime occurs (during travel). I just want it to be a fair representation. I think I'd best go back to my returns and work out average hours of overtime pay. I understand the reasoning for including as income when/if it's a regular reliable source but not projecting past irregular overtime as future expected earnings. Suppose I'd best get used to not fair and understand judiciary view.