“D.B.S. said the following in relation to the start date for support:
a. Where ordered, an award should generally be retroactive to the date when the recipient gave the payor effective notice of his or her intention to seek an increase in support payments. This date represents a fair balance between certainty and flexibility.
b. An earlier date may be appropriate if there is blameworthy conduct by the payor.
c. But generally a retroactive award should not commence earlier than three years before formal notice was given.
d. Effective notice is defined as any indication by the recipient parent that child support should be paid, or that a current amount needs to be renegotiated. All that is required is for the subject to be broached. Once that has been done, the payor can no longer assume that the status quo is fair.
e. But the date of effective notice is not relevant when a payor parent has engaged in blameworthy conduct.
In Michel the Supreme Court suggested that rather than ordering retroactive support back to the date of effective notice, it may now be time to simply start ordering payors to pay what they should have paid, as a matter of course.
a. Payors have an absolute – not a contingent– obligation to support their children in the amount set out in Child Support Guidelines, pursuant to a now long-standing, well-publicized family law regime.
b. By now, every parent should understand that the amount of child support you pay is based on the amount of income you earn. It’s a simple, logical concept.
c. If the obligation by the payor and the entitlement by the child are both absolute and unconditional, it makes little sense to invite more complication – and litigation – by adding a condition that “mandatory payments” are only “payable” if the recipient does certain specific things to ask.”