Obligation to Insure Life Must Track Amount of Alimony

Tennessee alimony divorce case summary and life insurance to secure alimony obligation.

Andrea Renea Hopwood v. Corey Daniel Hopwood

The husband and wife in this Willliamson County, Tennessee, case were married in 1999 and had four children.  In 2012, the mother filed for divorce, and the case went to trial in 2015.  In 2016, the case went a first time to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, which sent the case back to the trial court to decide some of the remaining issues.  The trial court finalized the alimony award, and the father brought a second appeal to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.  The husband argued that the trial court had erred in setting his income and that he should not have been required to carry life insurance of $350,000 to secure the alimony obligation.

The appeals court first turned to the computation of income.  The husband argued that the lower court failed to take into account income tax consequences, and that he simply could not afford to pay the amount ordered.

The court analyzed the evidence, and agreed with the wife that the husband had failed to introduce evidence of some of his actual expenses.  The court noted that the husband was essentially trying to modify the earlier order, but without the proper evidence.

Similarly, the court noted that the husband had not submitted tax returns in support of his arguments about the tax consequences.  For these reasons, the appeals court affirmed the income determination.

The court then turned to the question of whether the husband should be required to carry life insurance.  It calculated that his original total obligation was $450,000, and that the required policy was for $350,000.  But the amount had been reduced since the amount of the policy was set, and the appeals court agreed with the husband that the amount needed to be reduced.

For these reasons, the appeals court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded the case a second time to recompute the amount of the insurance policy.

No. M2018-00446-COA-R3-CV  (Tenn. Ct. App. May 14, 2019).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Alimony Law in Tennessee.