Child and spousal support formulas generally start from each party's actual income, but courts will impute income — treat a party as earning more than they currently report — when they find the party is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed without good cause, such as quitting a well-paying job shortly before a support hearing or refusing comparable available work. The goal is to prevent a party from manipulating the support calculation by suppressing income.

Courts typically look at factors like the party's work history, education, occupational qualifications, local job market conditions, and health when deciding what income to impute, and the process usually requires an evidentiary showing rather than a bare assertion that a party could be earning more. Legitimate reasons for reduced income — a documented disability, a good-faith career change, or a job loss despite reasonable efforts to find comparable work — generally defeat an imputation request.

Because imputation outcomes depend on fact-specific findings about capacity and good faith, Juricratic represents an imputation claim's likely success as a bounded probability dial tied to the evidentiary factors a user inputs, rather than presenting a specific imputed income figure as a predicted certainty.

Attorneys seeking imputation typically retain a vocational expert to establish earning capacity in the local labor market, while attorneys opposing imputation build a record of good-faith job search efforts or a legitimate reason for reduced income; the dispute directly moves the support calculation and is frequently a central battleground in cases involving a recently unemployed or self-employed party.