Court Opinion

ID: 9513289
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:33:46.490304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:48.406691
License: Public Domain

NEUMANN, Justice,
dissenting.
[¶ 12] I respectfully dissent. The majority has written this opinion as an interpretation of NDCC § 14-09-08.2. I can certainly understand this approach; the trial court’s opinion was based at least in part on § 14-09-08.2, and the ease was briefed and argued to this court as if the issue were the interpretation of that section. Nevertheless, I would like to suggest § 14-09-08.2 has nothing to do with this case.
[¶ 13] Section 14-09-08.2(1) states, “a judgment or order requiring the payment of child support until the child attains majority continues as to the child until the end of the month during which the child is graduated from high school or attains the age of nineteen years, whichever occurs first,” provided certain requirements are met. (Emphasis added.) Clearly, the section is intended to change every child support judgment or order that provides only for child support to continue until a child attains majority. It does not, by its language, require that such an amendment be inserted in every existing judgment. It simply applies an automatic blanket modification to all judgments that do not already have such a provision. However, the judgment in this case already has such a provision. By its own language, the Second Amended Judgment provides child support continues “until the child reaches the age of 18 years and graduates from high school, but not past the child’s 19th birthday, provided the child lives with the parent to whom child support is owed and is attending high school.” Because the Second Amended Judgment in this case is not one that simply requires payment of child support “until the child attains majority,” § 14-09-08.2 does not apply. And, because § 14-09-08.2 does not apply, the trial court was not called on to interpret the statute, but rather to apply the language of the Judgment to the facts.
[¶ 14] In order to apply the language of the judgment to the facts of this case, the trial court had to determine whether the parties’ child was still “attending high school,” as that *280phrase is used in the Judgment, after her eighteenth birthday. In order to make that determination the trial court made a finding of fact, reviewable under the clearly erroneous standard. While I certainly must concede there is plenty of evidence to support a finding that the child was not “attending high school” after her eighteenth birthday, I believe there is also evidence to the contrary, including her mother’s act of re-enrolling her while she was still eighteen, to support a finding that she was still attending high school after she turned eighteen. Because there is evidence supporting the trial court’s finding that the child was still attending high school, applying the clearly erroneous standard of review, I would affirm.
[¶ 15] William A. Neumann