Mother Not Underemployed to Parent Child

Tennessee child support case summary on voluntary underemployment in divorce.

Jennifer Blair Dematteo Turk v. Michael Joseph Turk, Jr.

The mother and father in this Rutherford County, Tennessee, case married in 1999 and had three children when the mother filed for divorce in 2017 following filing for bankruptcy.  They were able to agree on most issues, including naming the father as the primary residential parent for one of the children.

A trial was held before Judge J. Mark Rogers, who found fault on both sides.  The court divided the marital debt and ordered the father to pay the wife’s debts as a form of alimony.  The court set a residential schedule with a 50/50 split of co-parenting time.  The father was ordered to pay child support, based upon the wife’s income.  Even though the father claimed that the wife was voluntarily unemployed, the court rejected this argument.  Based upon these findings, the father was ordered to pay $1271 per month in child support. The father then brought an appeal to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.  He argued that the lower court had erred in setting the residential schedule and the amount of child support.  The appeals court turned first to the parenting plan.

The court began by outlining the statutory factors to be used in custody determinations.  The father claimed that the lower court had not adequately considered all of these factors.  But the appeals court reviewed the record and concluded that all of the relevant factors had been considered.  The father pointed out that the children had expressed a preference to be with their father the majority of the time.  But the appeals court found that it was more important to consider the mother’s need to spend the maximum amount of time with the children.  After reviewing all of the evidence, the court agreed that the lower court had acted properly.

The court then turned to the issue of child support.  In particular, it looked at the father’s claim that the mother was voluntarily underemployed.  Therefore, he argued that the child support should have taken into consideration the higher salary she was capable of earning.

The trial court had considered this issue, and noted that the mother had earned a higher salary earlier in the marriage.  But it also noted that she was terminated from that job through no fault of her own, and had done nothing inappropriate.

The lower court had also detailed the mother’s efforts to land a higher paying job, and concluded that her current lower salary was merely temporary, and not a result of her being voluntarily underemployed.

After reviewing this evidence, the appeals court concluded that the lower court had ruled appropriately.

Both parties requested their attorney fees for the appeal, but the appeals court held that they would not be awarded.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed and remanded the case.

No. M2019-00869-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. June 24,  2020).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Child Support Laws 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.