Mendoza v. Ramos (2010) 182 Cal.App.4th 680
Holding
A court may consider earning capacity in lieu of actual income only when consistent with the children’s best interests and only when supported by evidence sufficient to establish the parent’s ability to earn the imputed income. The court may not arbitrarily commence using earning capacity without fair warning to the affected party, and cannot impute even minimum-wage earnings if the record contains no substantiating evidence.
Relevance to this matter
Forecloses arbitrary imputation. Reinforces the moving-party-burden line at In re Marriage of Bardzik and In re Marriage of Regnery. The “current job-market conditions / present circumstances control” point and the notice / fair-warning requirement are both useful where opposing counsel seeks to impute Charles’s pre-2025 Northrop Grumman income without producing current job-market evidence.