Opinion ID: 1401436
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The 1992 Amendment to AS 25.24.170(a) Constitutes a Material Change in Circumstances.

Text: The central issue in both of these cases is whether the 1992 amendment to AS 25.24.170(a) constitutes a material change in circumstances for the purpose of modifying a child support order to extend beyond a child's eighteenth birthday. [12] We conclude that it does. First, we note that the legislature has answered this very question in its enactment of AS 25.24.170(b). Alaska Statute 25.24.170(b) provides in part that [f]or the purposes of a motion to modify or terminate child support, the adoption or enactment of guidelines or a significant amendment to guidelines for determining support is a material change in circumstances if the guidelines are relevant to the motion. Because the 1992 amendment to AS 25.24.170(a) extends the time during which a parent may be required to pay child support, it qualifies as a change in the law governing child support guidelines. [13] Moreover, we relied upon subsection.170(b) as support for our conclusion in Bunn v. House [14] that [i]n addition to factual changes, certain changes in the law can constitute material changes of circumstances permitting the modification of child support orders. [15] While a change in legal theory [16] or a change in decisional law [17] will not constitute a material change in circumstances, an amendment to a statute, such as AS 25.24.170, which guides the court in determining the period during which child support must be paid, is the type of change in the law that the legislature intended to cover with subsection (b). Thus, the 1992 amendment to AS 25.24.170(a) was a material change in circumstances for any custodial parent who has an unmarried child over eighteen, living at home, who is still attending high school.