This was reversible error for two reasons. First, it was contrary to the weight of the evidence. Although Patricia Williams acknowledged that living costs were higher in Colorado Springs, nothing in the record supported a notion that clothes cost four to five times more there than they do in Warrensburg, or that food there costs twice as much as food does in Warrensburg. In fact, an assumption explicitly underlying the Form No. 14 guidelines is that Missouri parents' expenditures for child-rearing do not differ significantly from national estimates. Second, even if clothes and food do cost more in Colorado Springs than they do in Warrensburg, the circuit court should not have concerned itself with where Patricia Williams lived.
Locale is a concern in custody considerations, but Form No.
14's purpose is to calculate what the law deems the appropriate amount of child support to be, wherever a parent may be living with a child. To have denied her request for a modification on that basis was unjustified. The circuit court's action suggests that it perceived that its role was to hold Patricia Williams to the bargain that she entered in 1991. This is not a contract action. The primary purpose of child support is to provide for a child's welfare.