Case Title: Cavallari v. Martin

Citation: 169 Vt. 210, 732 A.2d 739

Docket Number: 

State: vermont

Court: Vermont Supreme Court

Date: 1999-04-16T00:00:00Z

Document:
Cavallari v. Martin (97-278); 169 Vt. 210; 732 A.2d 739

[Filed 07-May-1999]

  NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under
  V.R.A.P. 40 as well as formal  revision before publication in the Vermont
  Reports.  Readers are requested to notify the Reporter  of Decisions,
  Vermont Supreme Court, 109 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05609-0801 of
  any  errors in order that corrections may be made before this opinion goes
  to press.

                                 No. 97-278

Marilyn Cavallari	                           Supreme Court

                                                   On Appeal from
     v.		                                   Bennington Family Court

Kingsley Martin	                                   February Term, 1998

John P. Wesley, J.

Marilyn Cavallari, Pro Se, Cambridge, New York, Plaintiff-Appellee.

Adele V. Pastor of Corsones & Corsones, Rutland, for Defendant-Appellant.

PRESENT:  Amestoy, C.J., Dooley, Morse, Johnson and Skoglund, JJ.

       DOOLEY, J.  The simple question raised by this case requires the Court
  to confront the  legal jigsaw puzzle of state and federal statutes
  applicable to the interstate enforcement of child  support orders.  At
  issue is a decree, originally entered by a New York court pursuant to that 
  state's law, allocating parental rights and responsibilities between a
  father and a mother who each  subsequently moved to Vermont.  Although the
  decree is silent on the issue, New York law  requires the non-custodial
  parent to pay child support until the child's twenty-first birthday.  We 
  must decide whether our family court was required to apply Vermont law and
  therefore to modify  the decree to terminate the support obligation when
  the child turned eighteen.  We hold that it  was, and therefore reverse the
  judgment of the family court, but stress that subsequent statutory 
  amendments would yield a different result in a modification request first
  presented to the family  court today.
 
 

       The relevant facts are not in dispute.(FN1) The parties never
  married but had one child,  born in 1978 when they were residents of New
  York.  In the same year, a New York court  entered an order establishing a
  child support obligation for father as the non-custodial parent.  The 
  order does not specify the duration of the support obligation.  Shortly
  after the order issued,  mother and child moved to Pennsylvania.  In 1990,
  a New York court modified the order to  increase father's payments.  At
  that time, father still resided in New York.  Several years later, 
  however, he moved to Vermont.  The child turned eighteen on January 22,
  1996 and graduated  from high school on June 6, 1996.  On June 12, 1996,
  father petitioned the Bennington family  court to modify the 1990 New York
  order.(FN2)  He alleged that mother and child were then also  residing in
  Vermont and, therefore, that the court should apply Vermont law to
  determine that his  duty to support his minor child had ended because by
  then she had turned eighteen and had  graduated from high school.  See 15
  V.S.A. § 658(c) (providing that court "may order support  to be continued
  until the child attains the age of majority or terminates secondary
  education  whichever is later"); 1 V.S.A. § 173 (fixing age of majority at
  eighteen).  Father contended that,  although New York law obligated him to
  support his child until she was twenty-one, Vermont's  earlier age of
  majority applied.
  
       After a hearing, a family court magistrate found that mother and child
  were residents of  Vermont at the time father's motion was filed and at the
  time of the hearing.  The magistrate  concluded that Vermont law applied
  because the forum state "need not accede to the judgment of  a sister state
  concerning a continuing matter that has become a purely internal affair."  
  Accordingly, the magistrate terminated father's support obligation.  Mother
  appealed to the 

 

  family court.

       The family court adopted the magistrate's factual determinations but
  reached the opposite  result.  The court reasoned that a "real, substantial
  and unanticipated change of circumstances,"  as required for modification
  of a support obligation pursuant to 15 V.S.A. § 660(a), is not  established
  simply because a new jurisdiction with a different law governing duration
  of child  support orders has acquired personal jurisdiction over the
  parties to the decree.  Thus, although  the family court agreed that the
  parties were subject to the laws of Vermont generally, the court 
  determined that it was without authority to modify the support obligation
  because father failed to  meet the specific jurisdictional
  prerequisite.(FN3)  Father appeals.
  
       The family court's rationale, while having the virtue of avoiding a
  difficult choice-of-law  problem, is inconsistent with applicable
  precedent.  In Beaudry v. Beaudry, 132 Vt. 53,