Court Opinion

ID: 9583562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:39:50.167271+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:51.094431
License: Public Domain

RABINOWITZ, Justice,
dissenting.
The superior court’s dissolution decree provided in part:
It is agreed between the parties that father will currently pay $205.00 per month as child support. Yearly reviews on September 1 of each year will be made to make adjustments if income has increased. When he graduates and obtains new employment at a higher rate of pay, he will begin paying the 27% that is required.
In ruling on Marianne’s Motion to Enforce Dissolution Decree, the superior court modified Brad’s support obligation retroactively to February 1,1993 on the rationale that the above quoted text of the dissolution decree required Brad to begin making payments “of 27% when he was employed at a higher rate of pay.” More specifically, the superior court concluded that the dissolution decree
emphasizefs] the increase in his income, not his graduation from college. Mr. Van Alien could become a career student and argue, on that basis, that his child support should not be increased, except perhaps in the review in September.
Although only a six-month differential is implicated as between the superior court’s February effective date and the majority’s holding that the increase in child support should have been made effective as of September 1993,1 cannot agree with the majority’s interpretation of the self-executing provisions of the dissolution decree.
The relevant portion of the superior court’s decree states: ‘When [Brad] graduates and obtains new employment at a higher rate of pay, he will begin paying the 27% that is required.” The majority reads this as imposing two conditions precedent to the immediate increase of Brad’s child support obligation: graduation and the obtaining of new employment at a higher rate of pay. In my view, “[w]hen he graduates” was simply intended as a description of the likely time when Brad would fulfil the condition — obtaining of new employment at a higher rate of pay.
*1079Although the questioned language of the decree (which incorporated the parties’ agreement) is somewhat opaque, I conclude that the superior court correctly construed the decree. As the superior court noted, a contrary interpretation could lead to Brad’s remaining a nominal student, or dropping out of school without a degree, while taking a lucrative job and thus escaping any child support increase until the September CSED review.