Alimony Not Reduced When Husband Fails to Meet Burden

Tennessee alimony modification case summary.

Douglas Patrick Hoering v. Marlita Dapar Hoering

The husband and wife in this Cumberland County, Tennessee, case were divorced in 2013 after presenting a marital dissolution agreement which called for the husband to pay $1,200 per month alimony until her death or remarriage.

In 2020, the husband made a petition to modify the alimony, in which he alleged that the wife no longer had a financial disadvantage, as she had obtained housing and support from her paramour.  After a hearing, the trial court granted the husband’s petition and reduced the alimony to $600 per month.  The trial court’s order, however, contained no findings of fact.  The wife appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

The appeals court first noted that the trial court’s failure to make any findings of fact meant that there was no way to apply the ordinary presumption of correctness.

The court noted, as it had “stated too often before,” the requirement for findings was not a mere technicality.

In this case, however, there was a transcript of the proceedings, and the appeals court was able to make an independent review, which it elected to do, in the interest of judicial economy.

It noted that to make a change in alimony, there must be a significant change of circumstances, and the party seeking the change bears the burden of proof.

In this case, the record consisted of only the testimony of the parties, comprising 67 pages of transcript.  The appeals court noted that a significant portion was spent on “irrelevant or marginally relevant subjects” such as whether the husband had an affair during the marriage.

The only evidence of the wife’s cohabitation was a brief snippet of the husband’s testimony.  There was also evidence that the paramour had his own address.

The evidence also showed that the wife worked at Walmart, was in poor health, and filed bankruptcy.

After reviewing all of the evidence, the Court of Appeals concluded that the husband had not met his burden of proof.  Therefore, it reversed the lower court’s judgment, and also assessed the costs of appeal upon the husband.

The appeals court opinion was authored by Judge Kristi M. Davis.

No. E2021-00529-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Apr. 1,  2022).

See original opinion for exact language.  Legal citations omitted.

To learn more, see Alimony Modification in Tennessee Law | How to Modify Alimony and our video, How is alimony decided in Tennessee?