Dad Who Overpaid Child Support Entitled to Amount Overpaid
Tennessee child support case summary on overpayments.
Michelle Kay (Clark) Love v. James Terrill Clark
The husband and wife in this Loudon County, Tennessee, case were the parents of three children at the time of their 1992 divorce, and the husband was ordered to pay child support.
By 2001, the husband no longer had a continuing obligation to provide child support, but he owed past due amounts. The wife went back to court and obtained a default judgment for about $37,000, including child support and other amounts owed to her.
An order of assignment was served on the husband’s employer, requiring that $130 per week be deducted. The notices stated that withholding must continue until further order from the court.
Wages were apparently withheld for the next fourteen years. In 2015, the husband filed a petition to end the assignment. He also alleged that he had paid more than the original amount of judgment, and asked for a judgment against the wife for the amount of overpayment.
The wife apparently conceded that she had been overpaid, but invoked the doctrine of voluntary payment. Under that doctrine, a person cannot get back payments voluntarily made with full knowledge of the fact that they were not owed.
The case was heard by Judge Rex Alan Dale, who agreed with the husband. After computing the overpayment, the trial court awarded the husband a judgment of almost $25,000, plus interest.
The wife then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. She again argued that the overpayments were voluntary, and that the trial court had erred in entering a judgment for them.
The appeals court, in an opinion authored by Judge W. Neal McBrayer, zeroed in on the question of whether the overpayments had been voluntary. It noted that there is not a precise rule for determining the issue, but that an involuntary payment was generally one that was against the will of the person paying. It noted that “certainly” a wage assignment overcomes the will of the employee. Even so, under the facts of the case, even a court-ordered payment might be deemed to be voluntary.
In this case, the appeals court did agree that the husband had waited a long time to contest the orders. However, it also noted that calculation of the exact amount of the overpayment was not a simple matter. Under these circumstances, the court held that the delay did not make the overpayments voluntary. The appeals court also determined that the husband was entitled to post-judgment interest.
Judge Charles D. Susano, Jr., dissented from the majority opinion, and would have reversed the lower court’s ruling. He argued that the husband was legally charged with knowing the amount remaining owed on the judgment, and should have acted more promptly when the balance reached zero.
No. E2017-01138-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. May 17, 2018).
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.
