TN Dad’s Income Imputed Due to Unreliable Income Evidence

Tennessee child support law case law summary on child support income determination and imputed income from the Court of Appeals.

Richard Jeremiah Garrett, Jr., v. Renee Michelle Elmore  – Tennessee child support, imputed income and child care costs

Richard Garrett, Jr., and Renee Elmore  were the parents of a son who was born after a brief relationship in 2009.  The father started making voluntary child support payments of $200 per month, but conflict arose after the father failed to attend the child’s birth, and the mother believed that he wasn’t spending enough time with his son during the first year.  The father, however, took the position that the mother was denying him reasonable visitation.

In 2011, the father filed a petition to establish paternity, set a parenting plan, and establish child support.  The court in Montgomery County, Tennessee, first ordered a DNA test which confirmed the parentage, and awarded the father parenting time pending the litigation.

The mother asked to be named the primary residential parent, and asked that the father’s parenting time be limited until such time as he established a consistent relationship with the child.  Trial was held before a magistrate, but the magistrate’s order suffered from procedural problems.  A new hearing was held, and the juvenile court judge granted the mother’s request for a new trial.

The mother had been laid off from her call center job in 2010 and had not sought other employment.  She was enrolled in college part time.  The father worked for a nonprofit that he had founded, and had worked as a real estate agent in the past.  The father was married and lived with his wife, son, and stepdaughters.

The child was three years old at the time of the hearing, and had a speech and language impairment for which he had been receiving therapy.

The trial court adopted the mother’s proposed parenting plan and designated her as the primary residential parent.  She was allotted 218 days of parenting time, and the father was given 147 days.

The court set the child support obligation at $760 per month.  This was based on imputed income of both parents, since the court found both of them to be voluntarily underemployed.

The father appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, alleging a number of errors.  The Court of Appeals first held that, given the irregularities with the original order, the trial court had properly ordered a new hearing.  It also carefully examined the parenting plan and allocation of parenting plan, and held that it was proper given the circumstances of the case.

The appeals court then turned to the issue of child support.  The father first argued that the trial court should have imputed more income to the mother.  The trial court had imputed only the minimum wage, and the father believed that a higher amount was proper.  He argued that $29,300 per year should have been imputed, since this is the median female income for Tennessee.

The appeals court, however, disagreed, and held that the lower court had acted properly in imputing only minimum wage given the circumstances of this case.  In particular, the mother’s previous employment had been minimum wage jobs.  The Court of Appeals also found that the trial court had properly excluded amounts received in student loans from the mother’s income.

The trial court had included a day care credit of $516 in its calculations, and the father argued that this was error.  He noted that there were no specific findings of fact supporting this amount.  However, the Court of Appeals carefully reviewed the record and concluded that the evidence did not preponderate against a finding for this amount.

The father also argued that the trial court should not have imputed income to him, since he presented reliable evidence of his actual income.  Here, the court noted that prior year tax records had shown lower income than the current year, and that these prior returns were, for that reason, not reliable evidence.  Therefore, it upheld the trial court’s finding of imputed income for the father.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the trial court.

No. M2013-01564-COA-R3-JV (Tenn. Ct. App. July 29, 2014).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

For more information, see Tennessee Child Support Answers to FAQ’s.  See also Miles Mason’s book available on Amazon.com Tennessee Parenting Plans and Child Support Worksheets: Building a Constructive Future for Your Family featuring actual examples of parenting plans and child support worksheets from real cases.