Court Refuses to Hear Dad’s Claim That He Overpaid Child Support
Tennessee child support case summary on credit for prior overpayment.
Guillermo Ramos v. Mellanie Caldwell
Child Support Collection & Enforcement in Tennessee
The parents in this Montgomery County, Tennessee, case had two children when they divorced in Kentucky in 2011. The father was ordered to pay child support. He subsequently moved to North Carolina, and the mother moved to Tennessee. In 2017, she had the child support order enrolled in Tennessee. The order required him to pay a total of $625.62, which included his current amount as well as arrearages. The order called for him to pay it to the Tennessee Central Child Support Receipting Unit, and the amount was subsequently increased to over $2500, based upon his income.
In 2019, the father made a petition to reduce the amount, due to his no longer being employed by the U.S. Army. He also alleged that he had made payments directly to the mother of over $17,000, based upon her representation that she hadn’t been receiving payments from his paycheck through the state. But she had indeed been receiving those payments, resulting in an overpayment.
The mother argued that the claim for the overpayments was barred by res judicata, since these payments were made prior to an earlier hearing. She argued that the alleged overpayments should have been addressed then, adding that his claim not to know about paying twice was absurd. The trial court also noted that the father didn’t prove his case, in that he never offered his earning statements showing the child support deductions.
The trial court agreed, holding that the father should have raised this claim before the prior hearing. The trial court did, however, reduce the ongoing obligation due to the father’s now lower income.
The father then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. The appeals court pointed out that there were two bases for denying the claim. In addition to the res judicata argument, there was the matter of the father not having submitted his earning statements into evidence showing that payment.
The father had not appealed this alternative ground for the ruling. Therefore, the appeals court held that there was no reason to address the res judicata issue, because there was an alternative basis for the lower court’s ruling. For these reasons, the court affirmed the lower court’s ruling.
No. M2022-00222-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Feb. 6, 2023).
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.
