Court Must Recalculate Parenting Days To Match Child Support
- At June 22, 2020
- By Miles Mason
- In Child Support
0
Tennessee child support case summary.
The mother and father in this Hickman County, Tennessee, case were married in 2014 and had two sons. They divorced in 2017, and in 2018, trial was held on establishing a permanent parenting plan and setting child support.
After trial, the court named the mother as the primary residential parent. The parenting plan stated that the mother would spend 223 residential days with the children, with the father having 142 days. The parenting plan also noted specific times for parenting, and the father argued that these did not add up to the amounts recited. The father brought an appeal to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, in which he argued that the number of days used in the child support calculation did not correspond with the number of days in the parenting plan.
The appeals court noted that if the time periods in the plan were followed, this would add up to a total of 132 total days for the father, rather than the 142 noted in the order. But another possible interpretation would have resulted in a total of 194 days for the father.
The appeals court noted that the child support guidelines credit a parent with a day if the parent spent more than 12 hours with the child in a consecutive 24 hour period. The court looked at the weekends identified in the plan, and concluded that the father’s time might have been undercounted by not applying this rule properly. After closely examining the order, the appeals court concluded that the actual split was 181 days vs. 184 days, which was quite different from the number of days recited in the plan. However, it did not that there might be some variance depending on exactly when weekends began and ended.
The appeals court held that the proper procedure to resolve the discrepancy was to remand the case for a recalculation. It noted that, in this case, the difference in child support would be about $241 per month.
For these reasons, the Court of Appeals remanded the case to the lower court for recalculation. It did note that, if necessary, the lower court was free to reevaluate and rework the parenting schedule. The court also taxed the costs of appeal upon the father.
No. M2019-00894-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Mar. 31, 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.
