Child Support Income Based on Most Recent Actual Income
Tennessee child custody and support modification case summary on income determination.
The mother and father in this Williamson County, Tennessee, case were divorced in 2013. The mother was named the primary residential parent of the couple’s two children, and she was awarded 265 days per year of parenting time. In 2017, the father filed a motion to modify the parenting plan. He asked to be named the primary residential parent and to be awarded 250 days per year of parenting time. He alleged that the mother had discouraged the children from a relationship with him and had forbidden them from communicating via video chat. The mother asked that the father’s parenting time be reduced, and that she be awarded decision making authority.
The trial court granted the mother decision making authority and limited the father’s communication with the children. The court specifically enjoined him from talking about child support payments with the children, video chatting, or signing up for extracurricular activities. It also enjoined him from posting information about the case on social media or getting out of his vehicle when picking up the children. The father then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
On the changes to the parenting plan, the appeals court first concluded that there were insufficient factual findings to warrant a finding of material change of circumstances. In particular, there was no indication that the lower court had followed the statutory factors. For this reason, the appeals court vacated that portion of the ruling and remanded the case. The court made the same ruling with respect to the father’s request to be named primary residential parent. There were insufficient factual findings to support the lower court’s ruling.
The father also appealed the lower court’s child support calculation. In particular, the father argued that the lower court had not considered his most recent income, and that the trial court had allocated him the wrong number of parenting days when doing the calculation.
The appeals court agreed that child support rulings need to be based upon the most recent income. Instead, the lower court had ruled based upon its prediction of what the father would earn. The appeals court held that this was improper. It also agreed that the number of parenting days had been improperly calculated. For this reason, it also vacated the award of child support and remanded this portion of the case as well.
After addressing the remaining issues, the appeals court vacated the lower court’s judgment and remanded the case.
No. M2018-00562-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. May 31, 2019).
See original opinion for exact language. Legal citations omitted.
To learn more, see Child Support Modification in Tennessee | How to Modify Child Support.
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.
