Mom’s Child Support Based on Actual Wages, Not Prior Earnings

Tennessee child support case summary on income determination.

Megan E. Smith v. Justin L. Smith

The mother and father in this Tennessee case had one child at the time of their 2011 divorce, and the trial court set the mother’s child support obligation at $45 per month.  In 2013, the trial court raised this to $369 per month, based on an increase in her income.  In 2014, the mother filed another petition to modify support, and the only issue at trial was her income, which she asserted had decreased.

In 2012, she had been earning $15 per hour at a nursing home, but that employment ended in 2013 after multiple people were let go.  She then got a job as a waitress earning $2.15 per hour plus tips, and she testified that she made between $50 and $90 per day.  She then got another job earning $19 per hour, but she was put on a performance action plan and sensed that she was about to be fired.  She resigned in order to receive her paid time off and 30 days of insurance.  In 2014, she got a full time job paying $12 per hour, and testified that she did not think it likely that she could get another job paying the $19 per hour from her former job.

The trial court did not believe that she had been voluntarily underemployed.  To set her earning capacity, the trial court averaged the four previous jobs and came up with $13.30 per hour.

The father appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals, arguing that the mother was voluntarily underemployed, and that the trial court had used the wrong approach in averaging the earlier wages.

The appeals court noted agreed with the trial court that even though the mother voluntarily resigned, this was not a case of voluntary underemployment, since either way, she was going to lose the $19 per hour income.

However, the Court of Appeals held that it was error to average the prior jobs, since imputed income only comes into play in cases of voluntary underemployment.  In this case, the lower court should have used the mother’s actual income at the time, rather than averaging the income from her former jobs.

For this reason, even though the father had appealed, the appeals court remanded the case to enter a judgment more favorable to the mother.

No. M2015-01038-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. May 24, 2016).

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.