Dad Cannot Modify Alimony When Agreed to Settlement W/out a Lawyer
Tennessee alimony modification case summary.
Mary Wagoner-Angelin v. Randall Jon Angelin
The husband and wife in this Hamilton County, Tennessee, case were married in 1997 and had two children, who were born in 1997 and 2000. The youngest child had not reached the age of majority at the time of the 2012 divorce.
The parties agreed to a marital dissolution agreement which provided that the husband would pay alimony of $1,500 per month for ten years. The mother was named the primary residential parent, and the father was ordered to pay $1,000 per month child support.
In 2015, the mother made a petition to modify the parenting plan. She cited changed circumstances that the father intended to relocate to Oregon. The father requested that the younger child be allowed to move with him to Oregon.
A hearing was held at which various issues were addressed. The father was held in contempt for a number of reasons. First, he was held in contempt for failing to obtain a termite inspection and to resolve flooding issues at the marital residence and to complete certain maintenance items. The court also ordered an upward deviation on the child support to account for half of the younger child’s private school tuition. It also found the father in contempt for various unpaid medical bills. The father then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. He raised a number of issues, the first being the trial court’s failure to modify his alimony obligation.
The father argued that the alimony should have been modified since he was unrepresented by an attorney when he agreed to the marital termination agreement, and that the alimony obligation was inequitable. He testified that he did not understand the agreement fully when he signed it.
The appeals court first noted that such a motion to modify a judgment was only to be granted in extraordinary cases. The trial court had found that this was simply a case where the father signed an agreement from which he later wanted to back out.
The appeals court agreed and noted that mere dissatisfaction was not a ground for modifying the judgment. Therefore, it affirmed the lower court’s refusal to modify the alimony.
The father fared better on some of the other rulings. With regard to some of the contempt findings, the appeals court noted that the marital termination agreement had been somewhat ambiguous, and that the father’s conduct did not constitute a violation. Therefore, the appeals court vacated these portions of the lower court’s ruling before remanding the case.
No. E2016-01850-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Aug. 29, 2017).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
To learn more, see Alimony Modification in Tennessee Law | How to Modify Alimony.
