Court Opinion

ID: 9409258
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-17 16:08:23.158976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:49.780820
License: Public Domain

J-S13031-23

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT OP 65.37

    MICHELLE D. MOORE                          :   IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
                                               :        PENNSYLVANIA
                                               :
                v.                             :
                                               :
                                               :
    MARK T. HERNANDEZ                          :
                                               :
                       Appellant               :   No. 2930 EDA 2022

                Appeal from the Order Entered October 21, 2022
     In the Court of Common Pleas of Monroe County Civil Division at No(s):
                                643-DR-2020,
                             PACSES: 147300685

BEFORE:      NICHOLS, J., MURRAY, J., and STEVENS, P.J.E.*

MEMORANDUM BY STEVENS, P.J.E.:                            FILED JULY 17, 2023

        Mark T. Hernandez (“Father”) appeals from the order of child support

entered in the Court of Common Pleas of Monroe County that included in the

calculation of his monthly net income $3,000 representing trust payments

made to him during his marriage, despite Father’s testimony that his mother

controlled the trust and recently stopped making such payments to him. After

careful review, we affirm.

        The trial court sets forth the pertinent facts and procedural history, as

follows:
      [Michelle Moore (“Mother”)] and [Father] were married on
      September 16, 2009. There was one child born of the marriage.
      The parties have since separated [in September 2020], and
      Mother filed a Complaint in Divorce on February 16, 2021. On
      January 29, 2021, Mother filed a Petition seeking support for the
      one minor child born of the marriage. Subsequently, on July 20,
____________________________________________

*   Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.
J-S13031-23

       2021, Father filed a Petition seeking alimony pendente lite. The
       petitions were combined for a hearing before the Support Master
       Richard James which was held on November 12, 2021.

       After the support hearing, Master Richard James made a
       recommendation for Father to pay $859.00 for the period of
       January 29, 2021, to September 26, 2021. After September 26,
       2021, Father was to pay $964.00 per month for the support of the
       minor child.

       The Support Master also found that alimony pendente lite
       payments to Father were not warranted and his petition was
       dismissed. Additionally, under this recommendation, Mother was
       to be responsible for the first $250.00 of the minor child’s
       uninsured medical expenses and Father was to be responsible for
       fifty percent of all other medical related expenses not covered by
       insurance. This Recommendation of the Master was adopted as
       an Order of the Court on January 4, 2022.

Trial Court Order and Opinion, 9/28/2022, at 1-2.

       The Recommendation of the Support Master set forth the following

rationale for including in Father’s monthly support calculations the $3,000 in

monthly payments from a multi-million-dollar trust1 that he claimed he was

no longer receiving:

       Father received funds from two . . . sources [other than
       employment].

       Until about September 2020, Father received $1,300.00 per
       month from his mother. This appears to be a gift. No entitlement
       to this money was shown and it will not be considered in the
       calculation of Father’s income.

       Until February 2021, Father received $3,000.00 as a trust
       beneficiary. The testimony indicated that [Father’s] mother was
       in control of the trust and stopped the payments to him.
____________________________________________

1 At the support hearing, Mother testified that the trust fund “has millions in
it in property and assets that [Father] has drawn from continuously since the
trust was set up.” N.T., 11/12/21, at 14-15.

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J-S13031-23

     Coincidences are always a concern. It is noted that the trust
     payments ended at about the time Mother filed for child support.

     Although [Father’s] mother may control the trust and may be the
     person who distributes the trust money, the issue is not whether
     Father receives payments from the trust but whether he has the
     right and/or the ability to receive payments from the trust. The
     trust document would reveal this, but such documents were not
     offered into evidence. Father did not provide credible evidence to
     show why his trust income ceased.

     Father’s testimony did not convince the Master that Father is
     unable to continue realizing income from the trust.

Master’s Findings, 12/23/21, at 1.      The Master’s Recommendation was

adopted as an order of the trial court on January 4, 2022.

     On January 24, 2022, Appellant filed one exception to the Order and

Master’s Recommendation, namely, that the Master erred in including monthly

trust payments of $3,000 in his income after making a finding of fact that

Appellant was not receiving such monthly payments. Upon review, the trial

court disagreed, on the following reasoning:

     In the Master’s report, the Master stated the trust document would
     reveal if [Appellant] has the right or ability to receive payments
     from the trust. This document was not offered by [Appellant] into
     evidence at the time of the hearing before the Master. Without
     this document to substantiate [Appellant’s] argument that he is
     not able to receive payments from the trust, it is up to the Master
     to determine the credibility of the [Appellant] through his
     testimony. After considering the Master’s report and testimony of
     the parties, we conclude the [Appellant] did not demonstrate or
     offer corroborating evidence that he is not able or lacks the right
     to receive monies from the trust at issue. Therefore, [Appellant’s]
     exception is denied.

Trial Court Opinion and Order, 9/28/22, at 4. This appeal followed.

     Appellant raises one issue for this Court’s consideration:

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      Did the trial court misapply the law in including the $3,000.00 that
      a parent previously received as a beneficiary of a trust controlled
      by his mother in that parent’s net monthly income, and in
      calculating his support obligation based on this net monthly
      income, when the Support Master found that this parent’s mother
      controlled the trust and that this parent stopped receiving these
      payments in February of 2021, resulting in these distributions
      being not actually available to this parent or received by this
      parent?

Brief of Appellant at 4.

      Our standard of review for appeals regarding child support orders is

whether there was an abuse of discretion. See E.R.L. v. C.K.L., 126 A.3d

1004, 1007 (Pa. Super. 2015). “[T]his Court may only reverse the trial court's

determination where the order cannot be sustained on any valid ground.” Id.

(citation omitted).   Moreover, “[a]n abuse of discretion is [n]ot merely an

error of judgment, but if in reaching a conclusion the law is overridden or

misapplied, or the judgment exercised is manifestly unreasonable, or the

result of partiality, prejudice, bias or ill-will, as shown by the evidence of

record.” J.P.D. v. W.E.D., 114 A.3d 887, 889 (Pa. Super. 2015).

      Additionally, we adhere to the following principles whenever a trial court

sits as the finder of fact in a support matter:

      [This Court] must accept findings of the trial court that are
      supported by competent evidence of record, as our role does not
      include making independent factual determinations. In addition,
      with regard to issues of credibility and weight of the evidence, this
      Court must defer to the trial judge who presided over the
      proceedings and thus viewed the witnesses firsthand.

      When the trial court sits as fact finder, the weight to be assigned
      the testimony of the witnesses is within its exclusive province, as
      are credibility determinations, and the court is free to choose to

                                      -4-
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      believe all, part, or none of the evidence presented. This Court is
      not free to usurp the trial court's duty as the finder of fact.

M.E.W. v. W.L.W., 240 A.3d 626, 634 (Pa. Super. 2020) (cleaned up).

      The crux of Father’s argument charges the trial court with abusing its

discretion by including among his actual financial resources the trust income

that he no longer actually receives.     In this vein, he relies on Fennell v.

Fennell, 753 A.2d 866, 868 (Pa. Super. 2000), in which we addressed the

issue of whether, for child support purposes, the father’s net income should

include his proportional share of retained earnings of a subchapter S

corporation, even though the father did not take home any of these earnings.

      Because the father did not actually receive the corporate distributions

and could not control whether the company would issue distributions or retain

its earnings, we held that the trial court erred when it considered the corporate

retained earnings as income available for support. Id. at 869. We continued,

“in situations where the individual with the support obligation is able to control

the retention or disbursement of funds by the corporation, he or she will still

bear the burden of proving that such actions were ‘necessary to maintain or

preserve’ the business.” Id. (citation omitted).

      The present facts are distinguishable from those in Fennell. Whereas

the father in Fennell had produced sufficient evidence to establish he neither

received income designated as corporate retained earnings nor had the ability

to control the disbursement of such earnings, Father in the case sub judice

offered only his bare testimony that his mother controlled the trust and

                                      -5-
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stopped payments to him, without ever addressing whether he has the right

to receive such payments.

      As reproduced supra, the Master’s Recommendation explained that he

considered Father’s testimony to be neither credible nor dispositive on the

determinative question of whether Father could demand continued payments

pursuant to the terms of the trust. Specifically, because the cessation of trust

payments coincided with Mother’s complaint in child support and Father failed

to present the trust document to prove he had no right to demand the

continuation of payments that he had received without interruption during his

marriage, the Master concluded Father had failed to substantiate his claim of

reduced income for purposes of calculating his child support obligations.

      We agree that the present matter thus turns on the credibility

determinations of the Master, which were adopted by the trial court. We have

reviewed the record and the court’s rationale in this regard, and we find no

support for Father’s claim that he had introduced sufficient evidence to

establish that the trust income which he had long received was no longer

available to him. Accordingly, as we discern no abuse of discretion below, we

affirm.

      Order affirmed.

                                     -6-
J-S13031-23

Judgment Entered.

Joseph D. Seletyn, Esq.
Prothonotary

Date: 7/17/2023

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