Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Value of Fringe Benefits

I had an interesting issue on a case recently.  The issue was the value of fringe benefits an employee received from his work and the calculation of child support.  The chancellor ruled that the court is allowed to consider these in setting child support which is the law.  However, the court stated that there needs to be some testimony as to the value of these items.  The court ultimately stated that these items were considered in setting child support based on what it determined the value was despite the fact that no value of these amounts was offered in evidence.  The issue gets more complex on deciding whose burden this is and furthermore how do you prove what these items are worth when the other party honestly has no clue either?  The best solution I can come up with is to do a Rule 1006 summary of the value of the items (i.e. gas, food, etc.) based on the information you have and put the burden on the other side to prove otherwise.  From doing some thinking on this issue, I think at that point the burden is on the other side to prove otherwise at that point. 

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