Court Opinion

ID: 9849495
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:40:59.056833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:48.180931
License: Public Domain

HUSPENI, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I would affirm the trial court. Minnesota Statutes Section 518.17(5), which adopts the guidelines outlined for use in public assistance cases, mandates that child support be set in amounts not less than the guidelines “unless the court makes express findings of fact as to the reason for the lower order.” It does not require express findings of fact for upward departures. Minnesota Statutes Section 518.551(5)(e) does so require, unless the parties otherwise agree to an upward departure. I do not believe the difference between section 518.17(5) and section 518.551(5)(e) is accidental, but rather that the legislature intended to vest in the trial court the discretion to set appropriate child support under section 518.17 in excess of the 518.551 guidelines without express findings.1
There are occasions in which the trial court may create an unusual or unique child support structure that is fair to the parties and that ensures more strongly the security and best interests of the minor children than would one blindly adhering to a rigid statutory scheme. I believe the plain language of Section 518.17(5) allows such a creation. I believe that is what the trial judge did here.
It is clear that, in setting child support, the court considered the husband’s asset of nearly $20,000 of homestead equity. This is a financial resource the court may consider in setting child support. Minn.Stat. § 518.17(4) (1982). Child support may be made a lien against marital property awarded in a dissolution decree. Minn. Stat. § 518.57 (1982). The husband has not shown he is unable to earn sufficient funds to pay that child support. The trial court had the discretion pursuant to Minnesota Statutes Sections 518.58 and 518.17(4) to award the entire homestead equity to wife and reserve child support. Instead, it awarded husband a homestead lien and an obligation to pay child support. If husband makes timely child support payments, his lien continues undiminished.
I believe the child support award and the property division here were proper and were within the broad discretion granted to the trial court in choosing among alternative dispositions available to it.

. Of course, the record must always reflect consideration of those factors set forth in Minnesota Statutes Section 518.17(4), to-wit:
(a) the financial resources and needs of the child;
(b) the financial resources and needs of the custodial parent;
(c) the standard of living the child would have enjoyed had the marriage not been dissolved;
(d) the physical and emotional condition of the child and his educational needs; and
(e) the financial resources and needs of the noncustodial parent.