Betty - this is my understanding with respect to alimony if an applicant wishes it to be considered on the credit application:
The bank can verify alimony if it normally verifies income. IOW, if you normally verify employment income, then you can verify alimony such as getting a copy of the court order and recent evidence that payment was received. You cannot apply any more onerous requirement on alimony than you would on any other source of income.
With respect to grossing up alimony - if that income is taxable, I would think you would have a compliance problem the other way - treating taxable income as non-taxable!
Just like collecting government monitoring information, there's no fail safe method that you can use every time. (i.e. you cannot collect monitoring information on every loan just to be safe.) You gross up income when it's non-taxable, but you do NOT gross it up if its taxable.
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CRCM,CAMS
Regulations are a poor substitute for ethics.
Just sayin'