Tennessee child support modification case summary
Tennessee child support modification case summary.
Tonya Halleen Blackwell v. Christopher S. Blackwell
The mother and father in this Montgomery County, Tennessee, case were divorced in 2013 and were the parents of two minor children, who were nine and thirteen years old at the time. The parties reached agreement as to a parenting plan, and the father was to exercise 285 days per year of parenting time of the son, with the mother exercising 285 days with the daughter. The father was to pay child support of $2100 per month to the mother. In 2014, the mother filed a petition to increase the child support and modify the parenting plan. This was based upon the mother’s assertion that the son was residing with her full time. The father alleged that the mother had coerced the son to live with her, but was planning to resume residing with him later in the year.
After hearing the evidence, the trial court granted the mother’s petition in part. It found that there had been a material change of circumstances because the son was now primarily residing with her. Since the court found a change to be in the best interest of the children, the court adopted a new plan giving her 285 days per year with both children. It also increased the father’s child support obligation to $3,200 per month, but the changes would not be retroactive to the date of the petition. Instead, the new amount was to take effect almost a year after the mother filed the petition.
The mother then appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. She argued that the trial court should have made the change retroactive to the date she filed the petition.
The appeals court noted that setting the date retroactively is up to the discretion of the trial court. However, it went on to say that the trial court must make adequate factual findings for the appeals court to determine whether that discretion was properly applied. Here, there were no specific findings. The trial court had stated that it did not act retroactively only because the father had spent additional funds on the children. Since there was a transcript of the hearing, the appeals court went on to make an independent review of the evidence.
When it did so, it noted that the son had been living with her for more than five months before filing the petition. Based on these circumstances, the appeals court noted that there were no grounds for the father to avoid paying child support as soon as the petition was filed.
For these reasons, the Court of Appeals held that the modification of child support should have been retroactive. Accordingly, it reversed the lower court’s ruling and sent the case back for modification.
No. M2015-01624-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. June 29, 2016).
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.
