A child support order may be considered a sacrosanct order since it orders a person to make periodical payments usually per month towards the maintenance of one’s children or wife. Furthermore it is an order that is issued regardless of the liable person’s financial situation and solely based upon his earning capacity ( see Mcewan v McEwan [1972] 1 W. L. R 1217).So if an order has been made already and the husband has lost his earning capacity, living below subsistence levels (meaning he that leaves below his means )he may apply for a variation of the order to adjust it to according to his paying capacity.) see ATTWOOD v. ATTWOOD – [1968] P. 591 where it was said “At the end of the case, the court must ensure that the result of its order is not to depress the husband below subsistence level”
.When it comes children and the wellbeing of families society takes a strict approach toward the responsibility of the parents to maintain them, thus adults who decide they want to start a family must be serious and ready to support their families or face the potential of imprisonment as a result of failing to comply with a maintenance order. A child support order cannot be evaded or skipped on the basis of unemployment and the and reason that an order might be legally evaded is if that person lacks the earning capacity to provide for his basic needs ( housing, eating, bills, etc.,).
However if a person has no earning capacity but has the sources to support his basic needs and his children or spouse then he will not be exempted from the order since his resources may be applied for the satisfaction of the order. (enforcement against companies, assets etc.,). So for example a person that is disabled and poor and lives on welfare benefits or a supplement specifically provided for by the state to help him or her meets his basic needs will probably be ordered to pay a symbolic sum or even nothing . However the fact that a person is unemployed does not on its own suffice to terminate a maintenance order since he may be considered to have an earning capacity, he ought to be involuntarily unemployed meaning that he or she is making his or her best efforts to find employment but is unable to. Usually the receipt of a supplementary benefit allowance by the commission is a strong inference by the appropriate administrative body in favour of that fact which must be taken into account by the court in reaching its decision. ( see Williams (L. A.) v Williams (E. M.) [1974] 3 W.L.R. 379 “ If, as I entirely agree, the justices are entitled to draw justifiable inferences from the known circumstances, there was no stronger source for inference in the present case than that the Supplementary Benefits Commission, charged with the responsibility for dealing with it, had accepted the husband as genuinely and not voluntarily unemployed. That was a matter which the justices ought to have taken into account.”.So a person who’s basic needs exceed his income, provided he has no other movable or immovable resources against which the maintenance order may be enforced may have to pay very little or anything at all since his own survival is at stake.
