Opinion ID: 1210641
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Does the Statute of Limitations Set Out in AS 09.10.040(b) Bar CSED's Motion to Establish a Judgment for Child Support Arrears Owed by Thomas?

Text: The parties' dispute over the meaning of AS 09.10.040(b) lies at the center of this appeal. [5] Because the context in which the legislature passed this statute is particularly relevant to how we interpret it in this case, we begin by discussing the circumstances surrounding its enactment. In 1993 two superior court judges ruled that former AS 09.10.040 [6] barred CSED from recovering child support arrears that had accrued more than ten years before the date of its AS 25.27.226 motion. [7] In the lower courts, CSED had not argued that the ten-year limit did not apply to its motions to collect arrears; instead, it claimed that the statute of limitations should be tolled based on its timely commencement of administrative enforcement actions. [8] The superior court judges rejected CSED's argument, and it appealed to this court. [9] Before we decided CSED's appeal, the legislature amended former AS 09.10.040 by adding subsection (b). [10] The new subsection provides that [a]n action may be brought to establish a judgment for child support payments that are 30 or more days past due under a support order ... if the action is commenced by the date on which the youngest child covered by the support order becomes 21 years of age. [11] As CSED states, the purpose of the new legislation was to lengthen the period of time in which motions to reduce arrears to judgment could be filed. In fact, subsection (b) was created at CSED's request because it feared the loss of its collection authority over a substantial amount of arrears if we affirmed the decisions of the superior court judges. [12] After the legislature passed new subsection (b), we decided State ex rel. Inman v. Dean , which resolved CSED's appeal of the lower court rulings interpreting former AS 09.10.040. Because the CSED motions at issue in Dean had been filed prior to the effective date of subsection (b), our decision interpreted the statute's former version. [13] As we explained, former AS 09.10.040 became part of Alaska's statutory law in the late 1800s and stemmed from the Oregon code. [14] Thus, our opinion relied on common law interpretations of the terms used in the statute. We began our statutory analysis in Dean by stating that a judicially decreed child support payment is a judgment that vests when the installment becomes due but remains unpaid. [15] Therefore, we explained, although AS 25.27.226 describes motions to collect arrears as establish[ing] a judgment, such motions are actually proceedings to enforce an already existing judgment. [16] We then held that enforcing a judgment does not qualify as bring[ing] an action within the meaning of former AS 09.10.040 because an action under common law is a proceeding commenced by the filing of a complaint. [17] We thus concluded that the former statute did not apply to CSED's motions under AS 25.27.226 to collect arrears. [18] Instead, we ruled that such motions were governed by AS 09.35.020, which applies to executions of judgments. [19] Under this statute, a judgment creditor who attempts to execute a judgment after a lapse of five years must show good cause for the delay; however, the statute places no absolute time limit on enforcement proceedings. [20]
CSED argues that Dean 's construction of the term action in former AS 09.10.040 must govern our interpretation of new subsection (b) because the subsection also refers to bringing an action. [21] Thus, it argues, because a motion to collect arrears is not an action, subsection (b) does not apply to the AS 25.27.226 motion filed in this case. Thomas replies that our construction of the word action in Dean is irrelevant to interpretation of AS 09.10.040(b) because Dean 's holding was based on the former version of the statute, which did not include subsection (b). [22] He further claims that the legislature passed subsection (b) at CSED's request to apply to AS 25.27.226 motions. Thus, he concludes that it would contradict legislative intent to construe the new subsection as not applying to the motion to collect arrears filed in this case.
Each of the parties' arguments about the scope of subsection (b) has merit. As CSED claims, a motion to establish a judgment for child support arrears under AS 25.27.226 is not an action as that term was understood at common law. But Thomas is correct that the legislature drafted AS 09.10.040(b) with the understanding that it would apply to such motions. [23] The crucial point, however, is that the legislature added new subsection (b) because of the lower courts' erroneous conclusion that former AS 09.10.040 applied to CSED's motions to collect arrears. We have previously considered how to analyze a statute when the legislature acts based on a mistaken premise. In City of Fairbanks v. Schaible, [24] we were asked to decide whether the City could be held liable for injuries resulting from the negligence of its fire department. [25] The City urged us to find that it was immune from tort liability; as evidence, it pointed to a statute enacted in 1957 that assumed that fire-fighting organizations enjoyed such immunity. [26] We recognized that the legislature's understanding of immunity law stemmed from decisions of the territorial district court in Alaska, which had held that cities were not liable in tort for their exercise of governmental functions. [27] We concluded, however, that the territorial court had misinterpreted the law of our state and that municipalities in Alaska did not enjoy immunity from tort liability. [28] We also implicitly held that the 1957 statute did not change the law and emphasized that it was based on an erroneous belief. [29] The circumstances in Schaible, although different from those in this case, are sufficiently analogous to provide guidance in resolving the issue before us. The legislature that passed the AS 09.10.040(b) amendment, like the legislature that passed the 1957 statute in Schaible, was relying on an erroneous construction of the law by a lower court. A statute passed based on a mistaken premise does not change the legal rule in effect before its passage. [30] Although the 1957 statute in Schaible was not an amendment to the preexisting statute, that case presented us with an opportunity to broaden the scope of municipal immunity beyond that in the preexisting statute based on the legislature's implied recognition of such immunity in the later statute. Instead, we declined to change the judicially recognized meaning of immunity to conform to the legislature's mistaken view of the law. [31] In this case, the legislature's decision to amend AS 09.10.040(b) does not relieve us of the duty of interpreting the term action in that provision. Understandably, the legislature relied on erroneous trial court decisions in its assumption that motions to reduce arrears to judgment constitute actions. But in Dean we held that they do not. As in Schaible, we decline to broaden the judicially recognized scope of the word action to conform to the legislature's erroneous belief about the law. Thus, we hold that new subsection (b) does not apply to AS 25.27.226 motions to collect arrears because such motions are not actions as that term is understood in the common law. The superior court therefore erred in concluding that new subsection (b) barred CSED's AS 25.27.226 motion in this case. [32]