“One of the objectives of the Child Support Guidelines is to establish a “fair standard of support for children that ensure that they continue to benefit from the financial means of both spouses after separation. The Guidelines are a means of making support calculations more objective. They also try to improve the efficiency of the legal process by providing guidance in setting out the various levels of support. They also ensure that consistency is applied by the Court when determining child support.
Section 4 of the Guidelines allows the Court to deviate from a strict application of the Tables where the payor’s income is over $150,000. The Court may look at the condition, needs and other circumstances of the children, if the Court thinks the Guidelines are inappropriate.
There is a presumption in favour of Guidelines support. To not apply them requires that there be “clear and compelling evidence” to show that they should not apply. The sheer size of the Table amount is not sufficient to depart from it. The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Francis v. Baker, 1999 CanLII 659 (SCC), [1999] S.C.J. No. 52 has been referred to by our Courts in many cases involving the issue of child support where the payor’s income is substantially over $150,000.
In R.v.R., 2002 CanLII 41875 (ON CA), [2002] O.J. No. 1095 (O.C.A.) our Court of Appeal summarized those findings in paragraph 39, as to how much “high income parents should pay in child support.” Trial Judges have discretion to either increase or decrease the Table amount, although the Table amount is presumed to be the appropriate amount. In that paragraph, the Court noted:
For children of wealthy parents, reasonable needs include reasonable discretionary expenses. A paying parent who claims the table amount is inappropriate must, therefore, demonstrate that budgeted child expenses are so high that they “exceed the generous ambit within which reasonable disagreement is possible.”, in short that the budgeted expenses are unreasonable.”