Tennessee Dad Liable For Child Support During Time Spent in Prison

Tennessee child support case summary on back support.

State of Tennessee ex rel. Inger Brown v. Larry W. Shipe, Jr.

The State of Tennessee brought this child support action in 2014 to set the father’s child support obligation.  The trial court set the father’s obligation at $299 per month, retroactively to 2007.  However, the trial court excluded from the period of retroactivity the time that the father had been incarcerated for four years.  The child’s grandmother, who had been caring for the child, then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, and argued that the time of incarceration should not have been excluded.

The Tennessee child support guidelines provide that criminal activity and/or incarceration should not provide grounds for reduction of child support.  Prior to this change in the guidelines, courts had discretion to reduce child support because of incarceration, since those cases had ruled that conviction of a crime does not necessarily constitute voluntary unemployment.  However, the court noted that the quoted language of the child support guidelines meant that Tennessee courts no longer had discretion to reduce child support for this reason.

The appeals court called the new guidelines “clear and mandatory,” and concluded that the lower court’s ruling was precluded.  For this reason, the appeals court sent the case back to the trial court for a proper calculation of child support.  It also assessed the costs of the appeal against the father.

No. E2014-02064-COA-R3-JV (Tenn. Ct. App. Oct. 29, 2015).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Child Support Collection & Enforcement in Tennessee.

See also 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 available on Amazon.com.