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The Use Of Vocational Experts

In the event your ex is not living up to their full potential and relying heavily on you for their alimony welfare, it could be advantageous for you to utilize the expertise of a vocational evaluator to prove that they are a laggard and shirking their duty to become a self-sufficient and productive member of society.

On the other hand, they might try to do the same to you in the event they are looking for a way to pry more money out of you. By convincing the judge that you should be earning more, the judge can then have a reason to "impute" income to you based on the earnings you "should" be getting were you to be working to your full potential.

Definitely it is a two edged sword, but one with which you should be able to handle either defensively or offensively.

On a defensive basis, it would probably be wise for you to go out and get your own evaluator to offset that of the opposition's use of one against you. Their evaluator will try to prove that you are underemployed. However, you need to keep in mind that the other evaluator might not have any credentials with which to evaluate you if you are employed in specialized areas of work. You need to check this.

Your evaluator's job is to counter the other evaluator to show that you were working at your highest and best use allowed by your skills, the local job market and whatever other factors they consider. They need to show that the other evaluator is ill-equipped to assess your skills and the specifics about your the profession of which you might be a part.

Should you find yourself at the wrong end of an inexperienced or unqualified evaluator and your objections to disregard their inaccurate assessment of your work potential, there is a possibility, which you might explore. Someone from one of the forum groups, which I monitor, made mention of the possibility of using a Writ of Mandamus to a higher court to force the trial court to order an appropriate evaluation. A Writ of Mandamus is a petition to a higher court to send a mandate down to the trial court to do or forbear from doing some specific act, which that body is obliged under law.