Court Opinion

ID: 9656222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:43:37.045661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:30.468541
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Justice,
dissenting.
The issue before us does not concern Charles’s duty to support his children. That issue has been decided and the decision is that he must pay monthly support. Rather, this appeal concerns the method of enforcing the support order.
The appeal was presented to us under the guise that the referee and the trial court were unaware that they could hold Charles in civil contempt even though his failure to pay the court-ordered child support was due to his voluntarily placing himself in a position where he was unable to do so. But the request for review of the referee’s findings and recommendations made to the trial court on behalf of Shirley specifically concerned that matter. My review of the record does not lead me to believe that the trial court was operating under an erroneous concept of the law when it affirmed the findings and recommendations of the referee.
Unless this court is willing to hold, as a matter of law, that the trial court’s findings are clearly erroneous and that it abused its discretion in failing to hold Charles in contempt for failure to pay the court-ordered child support, it appears to me that reversal and remand is futile. Furthermore, if the trial court finds Charles in contempt, as the majority opin*631ion appears to indicate it should, the punishment, including the amount of any penalty for the contempt, rests in the sound discretion of the trial court and a fine may be nominal. Red River Valley Brick Corp. v. City of Grand Forks, 27 N.D. 431, 146 N.W. 876 (1914).
I might agree that Charles’s support of his children should be his first priority but there is sufficient evidence in the record indicating why, at this time, he did not make it to sustain the recommendation of the trial court. I would affirm the order of the trial court.