Supreme Court Of Arkansas Page 7
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14Cite as 2009 Ark. 599
income. Id. Furthermore, the Alaska Supreme Court stated that because the benefits were
essentially earnings based on the father’s past contributions to Social Security and, therefore,
credited as child support payments, by parallel reasoning the payments should be considered
as income for purposes of calculating child support. Id.
Similarly, in In the Matter of Angley-Cook, 151 N.H. 257, 855 A.2d 431 (2004), the
New Hampshire Supreme Court held that Social Security retirement dependency benefits
constitute income for child support purposes. According to the Angley-Cook court, New
Hampshire’s child-support statute broadly defines the term “gross income” as “all income from
any source,” and explicitly lists social security benefits in the items that are to be included in
income. Id. at 260, 855 A.2d at 435. The New Hampshire Supreme Court distinguished
Social Security benefits from other public programs and stated that “unlike welfare and other
forms of public assistance, social security benefits represent contributions that a worker has
made throughout the course of employment . . . .” Id. (citing Miller v. Miller, 890 P.2d 574
(Alaska 1995)).
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has also held that Social Security Disability
Income (SSDI) dependency benefits should be included in the income of a noncustodial
parent:
The fairest approach for calculating the credit here is to treat the SSDI
dependency benefits as if they were first paid directly to the noncustodial
parent, who then pays that same amount to the custodial parent to satisfy some
part of the support obligation. Specifically, the amount of the SSDI dependency
benefits should be included in the income of the noncustodial parent and the
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