Judge orders B.C. doctor to raise spousal support payments to $24K per month

A B.C. doctor earning roughly $1 million per year was forced to share a larger portion of his income to his ex-wife after a recent B.C. Supreme Court hearing.

The unnamed doctor was brought into court after his ex-wife suspected he was making more money than he reported the last time they were in court in 2009 when he expected he would be earning just $700,000, according to a B.C. Supreme Court decision by Justice Peter Edelmann.

His former spouse was correct, he averaged $1.077 million per year and his monthly payments to her was increased from $18,000 per month to $24,000.

The couple married while they were still in school — he in medical school, she studying to be a teacher. They married in 1987 and while she became a teacher-on-call for the first six years of marriage, she never worked again.

His argument was that she could work to maintain her income but has chosen not to and "must be held accountable for her willful refusal to apply herself or her net worth to any remunerative opportunity."

In the court decision, she said she volunteered at the emergency department of Kelowna General Hospital once a week as well as with a Rwandan charity, travelling to Africa “on a regular basis.” She also bought a home in Kelowna with the “intention to rent… to lower income families to help alleviate the affordable housing problem in Kelowna.” However she only rented it to two tenants and the last one “used the property to sell crack cocaine and caused significant damage to the property."

Instead, she was considered to have an income of $35,000 as part of the calculation for spousal benefits.

However in the time they have been divorced, his net worth grew 4.5 times to $5.4 million while hers remained at roughly the same $1.2 million from divided assets at the time of the divorce.

The court also took into account that his take-home income is higher because he no longer has to make child support payments for their two children.

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