Dad Not Entitled to Reduction After Agreeing to Upward Child Support Deviation

Tennessee child support modification case summary.

Christina Brooke Tigart v. Charles Shannon Tigart

The mother and father in this Montgomery County, Tennessee, case were married in 2001 and had two children, born in 2005 and 2012.  In 2019, they were divorced after agreeing to a marital dissolution agreement.  They agreed to a permanent parenting plan giving the father 125 days of parenting time, with the mother getting 240 days.  They agreed that the father would pay child support of $2,500 per month, which was an upward departure from the guidelines.  When the older child graduated from high school, the amount was to be reduced to $1,500 until the younger child graduated.

In 2019, the mother went back to court to request a modification.  She proposed moving to Kentucky, where she had a standing job offer as a real estate agent.  She alleged that the father refused to comply with the plan in regard to exchange times.  She also moved for contempt relative to his failure to make needed repairs to property that was to be sold, and his failure to remove a GPS tracker from the mother’s vehicle.

The father denied the allegations, and asked that he should be named primary residential parent.  He also asked to have the original decree, based upon his understanding that the upward departure was only temporary, and that he was coerced into signing.

The trial court denied the father’s motion to set aside the judgment.  The mother was allowed to relocate, and the parenting time was modified somewhat.  The mother was granted 225 days, with the father receiving 140.  Child support was calculated based upon the guidelines, with father paying $1288 per month.

The mother asked for reconsideration of the child support, asking that the original $2500 be reinstated.  The trial court agreed that it had misapplied the law, and reinstated the $2500.  The mother was denied her request for attorney’s fees, and did not hold the father in contempt.  The father then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

After stating the standard of review, the appeals court first turned to the question of child support.  The mother argued that no change was warranted, since there had been no material change of circumstances to the factors which warranted the upward departure.  The trial court’s order had recited the original reasoning for the upward departure—a desire that the minor children be able to maintain their accustomed lifestyle.  In its reconsideration, the lower court concluded that this rationale had not seen a material change of circumstances.

The appeals court agreed with the mother’s reasoning, and also rejected the father’s argument that a new child, and a slight change in parenting time, constituted grounds for modification.  It noted that when the upward departure was removed, there was not a significant variance in the circumstances.  And since the grounds for the upward departure had not changed, that should stay in place as well.

The mother argued on appeal that the trial court should have held the father in contempt.  The trial court had found that the father had failed to meet some of his obligations.  But the lower court’s order was silent as to whether those failures were willful.  In order to rule on the contempt petition, the lower court was required to make a finding as to willfulness.  For this reason, it remanded the case for a determination.

The mother also argued that the lower court erred in failing to grant her attorney’s fees, which were called for in the marital dissolution agreement.  The appeals court agreed that she was entitled under the plain language of the agreement.  For that reason, it also remanded for a computation of those fees.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed in part, but remanded the case for further proceedings.

No.M2020–01146-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Sep. 24,  2021).

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.