Court Opinion

ID: 9766171
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:35:53.38417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:20.019707
License: Public Domain

Morse, J.,
concurring. This case is proof of the old saw, “lawyers argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.” In the words of Justice Dooley’s dissent, “It is easy in this contentious litigation to get lost in the underbrush.” 168 Vt. at 29, 714 A.2d at 636. Yet, as I read the majority and dissent, it appears to me that the “underbrush” becomes a tangled thicket.
I fear the judicial debate here will make child support determinations more of a chore than necessary and, while I agree with the Court’s result, I write separately to suggest we relax such painstaking oversight of child support decisions. Reasonable discretion was *27used in this case, and family courts need not wander through labyrinths to determine child support.
The controlling facts are simple. Father made $190,000 a year, nearly ten times the income of mother. Mother annually earned $20,000, received an additional $6,000 in spousal maintenance, and $20,000 in child support for three children, for a total of less than $50,000 a year, or four times less than father. Despite the parties’ initial stipulations, the calculation of child support has been a protracted and acrimonious source of contention. In addition, resort to the alternative-dispute-resolution process has failed to settle their disputes. The need for judicial intervention was apparent.
The magistrate, noting the significant disparity in the parties’ respective financial resources as well as their demonstrated inability to establish and abide by a method for calculating support, devised a simplified calculation method aimed at providing the children with a better standard of living when living with mother.
I believe the magistrate’s award is a reasonable exercise of discretion under 15 V.S.A. § 656(d). The same result could have been accomplished, in my opinion, by resort to the maintenance supplement provision of Vermont’s statutory scheme, 15 V.S.A. § 661(a). This provision provides:
[T]he court shall order payment of a maintenance supplement to the custodial parent to correct any disparity in the financial circumstances of the parties if the court finds that the disparity has resulted or will result in a lower standard of living for the child than the child would have if living with the noncustodial parent.
Although § 661(a) lists several factors pertaining to the respective financial circumstances of the parties to be considered by the court, including gross income, it requires that only one specific finding be made, namely a lower standard of living for the child. See Nevitt v. Nevitt, 155 Vt. 391, 397, 584 A.2d 1134, 1138 (1990). The fact that the children here enjoyed a much higher standard of living when visiting their father is beyond dispute.
Although the parties’ original 1988 final order contains a provision essentially waiving mother’s right to supplemental maintenance, we held in Grimes v. Grimes, 159 Vt. 399, 404-05, 621 A.2d 211, 213-14 (1992), an agreement cannot conclude the interests of the children, nor remove the court’s continuing jurisdiction over child support. Thus, notwithstanding the parties’ agreement to the contrary, a *28custodial parent simply cannot waive the right to supplemental maintenance because the real beneficiaries of such an award are the children.
I also note that in Grimes we held that the trial court did not err by concluding that a child support award in excess of the amount calculated under § 659 must be characterized as maintenance under § 661, and while this conclusion was not based on the agreement between the parties, it was based on and fully supported by the statutory scheme. See id. at 407-08, 621 A.2d at 215. Therefore, even if the magistrate here calculated an award consistent with the extrapolation method contained in the original divorce decree, she still would have had the statutory authority to adjust the amount upward to reflect father’s income so that his children could also benefit from his economic success as they presumably would have had the marriage not dissolved.
I, too, disagree with the dissent’s view that there was not a sufficient shift in circumstances to justify a modification of the support obligation. The father’s persistent bad faith in undermining mother’s ability to enforce their agreement on child support is reason enough to eliminate it and substitute a different standard. The “stipulated” financial package was particularly favorable to father at the expense of mother’s resources to support her children. His bad faith efforts to undermine that agreed order, in my view, was a refutation of his original agreement on child support. He cannot, in fairness, discard what he considers a detriment and keep the benefits.