Resources
Child Support Resource Library
Welcome to the YoungWilliams Child Support Resource Library. Search by keywords or use the filters to select categories of interest to you. Currently, our Library consists of academic and government research articles and reports from around the country, federal opinions, and case law from states in which our full service child support projects are located.
In re Pretz (Kansas 2023)
Under the law of the case, a motion to modify support can’t be used to relitigate issues already decided by the court in a previous stage of the case. The district court granted the father’s motion to modify child support. The mother did not appeal this order. Almost immediately, the mother filed a new motion to modify. The district court denied her motion based on res judicata and she appealed. The appellate court upheld the denial of the motion. Under the law of case doctrine, which can be raised on a court’s own initiative, the mother couldn’t relitigate an issue decided in a previous stage of the case. The mother failed appealed the first modification order. She couldn’t use a new motion to modify to make the same arguments. The mother also argued the district court improperly applied the multiple-family standard to calculate support and that this was a material change in circumstances. The appellate court disagreed. No authority supported this argument. And, this situation existed at the time of the earlier modification order, which the mother failed to appeal.
Price v. Price (North Carolina 2022)
Evidence must support the determination of a parent’s income. Income determinations will be reviewed de novo. The father appealed the final order in this modification action, arguing that he had no notice of the hearing and that the trial court erred in calculating his income. The father failed to appear at the hearing. To calculate the father’s income, the mother presented the father’s W-2 form with his annual wages, evidence of his receipt of short-term disability payments, and income from a business. The appellate court found he had proper notice of the hearing but that the evidence didn’t support the income determination. The father fired his attorney prior to an initial hearing and then didn’t appear. At the in-person initial hearing, the trial court announced a new hearing date in open court. The appellate court found this was constructive notice to the father. He had a duty to attend the initial hearing or ask about a new hearing date. The appellate court reviewed the income calculation de novo. As to his income, the appellate court found that taking the evidence of income presented at face value, the income calculation was wrong. It wasn’t added correctly and there was no other evidence to explain the amount. The child support provision was reversed and remanded for additional evidence.
Gyger v. Clement (North Carolina 2022)
Under the Hague Convention, the respondent parent must have minimum contacts with a country for the country to have jurisdiction to enter a child support order. Switzerland, on behalf of mother, requested North Carolina register a Swiss child support order for enforcement. The father argued the Swiss Court had no personal jurisdiction over him, which is required as part of the Hague Convention. The North Carolina district court agreed. It found the father hadn’t received the required notice and opportunity to be heard. The mother appealed. The appellate court affirmed the decision. Switzerland and the United States are both signatories to the Hague Convention on Maintenance, which sets out the procedure to enforce orders between countries. A respondent must have received notice of the foreign order sufficient to meet the standards required here in the United States. Switzerland couldn’t show personal jurisdiction in this case. The father had regularly visited the children in Switzerland but had no other contacts with the country. The mother also argued she didn’t receive notice of the hearings in this action. However, evidence showed notices were sent to the Swiss agency that initiated the action, per policy.
In re Parentage of MF (Kansas 2022)
In this ongoing parentage case, the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s determination that a birth parent successfully rebutted a presumption of the appellant’s parentage. The case was heard on remand from the Kansas Supreme Court, who sent it back for the district court to apply the proper parentage test. First, the party who wishes to be declared a legal parent must satisfy one of the statutory presumptions in K.S.A. 23-2208(a). If the presumption is established, then the other party must rebut it by clear and convincing evidence, by court decree establishing paternity of someone else, or an application of the test for competing presumptions. If the presumption is rebutted, the burden shifts back to the other party to prove the existence of a parent-child relationship by a preponderance of the evidence. This appeal hinges on the second prong of the test. Both parties agreed to presumption was established. The district court found the birth mother rebutted the presumption and the appellant disagreed. An appellate court reviews the evidence presented in a light most favorable to the prevailing party to ensure it supports the outcome. It doesn’t reweigh it. Applying this standard, the appellate court found the birth mother presented evidence sufficient to rebut the presumption. The burden then shifted to the appellant to prove the existence of a parent-child relationship. This had to go above and beyond the initial presumption. The appellate court acknowledged both parties presented evidence and the evidence was conflicting. It found the district court appropriately found the birth mother’s evidence more credible.
Hoard v. Barrom (Tennessee 2022)
A court is without jurisdiction to modify a support order once a child has emancipated. The state of Tennessee petitioned to modify the father’s support order. The child turned 18 the following month. The trial court modified the order. A year later, the father moved to set aside the order, arguing the trial court had no jurisdiction to modify since the child had turned 18 and graduated from high school before order entry. The court denied the motion to set aside. The father appealed. The appellate court vacated the support order. The trial court was clearly without jurisdiction to enter the order. It was undisputed that the child had reached the age of majority and graduated from high school before order entry and before the retroactive effective date of the modification.
Hornsby v. Hornsby (Mississippi 2022)
A parent requesting a modification based on a reduction in income must show a corresponding change in his or her lifestyle. The father, a self-employed lawyer, requested a modification of child support. The chancery court denied his request. The father appealed. The appellate court affirmed. The father argued the chancery court improperly granted a motion in limine that excluded relevant evidence. However, the father made no proffer of evidence during the trial and, on appeal, failed to specify any specific evidence that was excluded. The father also argued the chancery court improperly considered his access to credit as a reason to deny the modification and purchases made by the father and his new wife as an ability to pay. The appellate court found no merit to either argument. The chancery court properly weighed the father’s claimed reduction in income against his standard of living. The father and his wife had recently built a new home and purchased a new BMW. The chancery court noted his access to a line of credit as a part of his private practice.
Barham v. Barham (North Carolina 2022)
A parent can’t unilaterally modify a child support order. The original divorce decree ordered the father to pay support for the parties’ eight children. Support was modified several times. After entry of the latest modification, the father began paying one cent per pay period toward monthly support. He filed for credit for overpaying support, arguing he had made two additional child support payments each year for the years spanning 2013 -2019. The mother filed a motion for contempt for nonpayment. The trial court found the father in contempt. No precedent supports the father’s overpayment argument. He made a unilateral mistake of making additional payments and could have sought relief during one of the earlier modification proceedings. The youngest child at home wouldn’t benefit from those payments. The father willfully altered his payroll on his own and without seeking court approval and he had the ability to pay. The father appealed. The appellate court upheld the contempt finding. The trial court’s order addressed each element of contempt and didn’t abuse its discretion. The father argued he couldn’t have willfully failed to comply with the order because he was never behind due to his prepayments. The appellate court noted that courts have discretion when dealing with a request for credit. However, there is no automatic right, and in this case, the father didn’t have court approval of his actions.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Sanctioning and Child Support Compliance Among Black Families in Illinois
The Temporary Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) block grant provides eligible families with cash assistance in return for compliance with specific requirements, such as cooperating with the child support program. This article reports on research done in the state of Illinois regarding policies around the receipt of TANF and the barriers to maintaining this benefit. The research found these policies create barriers that disproportionally affect families on the basis of their race. The article recommends changing the goal of the TANF program to helping families thrive instead of punishing them for noncompliance. Several other policy changes are recommended, as well: a move away from the child support cooperation requirement and full pass-through of child support to the custodial parent.
Marcel v. Marcel (Tennessee 2022)
To calculate child support income for a parent with variable income (wages, bonus, overtime), the trial court should consider income over a period of time which will account for the variable income. In this case, the father worked at a plant and his income varied. He earned wages, bonuses, overtime, and double time. To calculate his income for child support, the trial court used his last four paystubs, which didn’t include any of this income. However, the information on the pay stub indicated that this type of income had been received year-to-date. The mother appealed the child support term of the final order. The court of appeals vacated the child support provisions and remanded for recalculation. The trial court failed to consider income over a reasonable period of time. While the definition of reasonable is left to the trial court’s discretion, the appellate court has a preference for a long-term average income for parents with a history of varied income.
Eidson v. Kakouras (North Carolina 2022)
Stipulations to facts are favored but they must be clearly shown in the record and both parties must agree. The parents divorced in 2012 and post-divorce actions for modification of custody and child support began immediately. Specific to this appeal, the father appeals the latest child support order, which resolved a variety of outstanding motions. The appellate court vacated the orders on appeal and remanded. The trial court erred in relying on an undocumented stipulation between the parents to use outdated income instead of current income, erred in calculating the parents’ incomes. The appellate court upheld the finding of a substantial change of circumstances to justify the modification.
