The court may also consider as income the benefits a party derives from expense sharing or other sources.1 In determining the benefits of expense sharing, the court cannot consider the income of another spouse, regardless of the legal regime under which the remarriage exists, except to the extent that such income is used directly to reduce the cost of the party’s personal expenses.2
What the court is looking for in this type of case is how much the new spouse reduces the litigant’s personal and living expenses. For example, if a mother is married to a new husband and that husband contributes $5,000.00 towards the mother’s living expenses, the court may (but is not required to) impute some or all of that $5,000.00 to mother as gross income. Here is a primitive analysis: Determine the income of the spouse for whom expense sharing is to be calculated. Examine that spouse’s expenses for herself only. Thereafter, subtract the spouse’s net income from her expenses. The balance of her expenses not covered by her net income is the amount “shared” by her current spouse. This amount may be added to her income.
In Greene v. Greene, the court held that any contribution to expenses shared by the parties and their new spouses, such as a car loan, credit card debt, cable television, or rental insurance is includable as income.3
In Wollerson v. Wollerson, the court addressed the issue of what information is discoverable from a second spouse. The appeals court upheld an order compelling the second wife to disclose information from her personal checking account insofar as it was one of the few ways that the former wife could determine the second wife’s contribution to the husband’s expenditures. The appellate court ordered the trial court to conduct an in camera inspection of the checking account information to determine the relevancy of the records requested.4