Court Opinion

ID: 9723293
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:10:41.552833+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:46.661298
License: Public Domain

R. B. Burns, J.
(concurring). I concur in the results reached by the majority of my brothers that the case should be reversed and remanded to the trial court.
However, in Stanaway v Stanaway, 70 Mich App 294; 245 NW2d 723 (1976), this Court cited MCLA 552.17; MSA 25.97, which reads:
"The Court may, from time to time afterwards, on the petition of either of the parents, revise and alter such decree concerning the care, custody and maintenance of the children, or any of them, and make a new decree concerning the same, as the circumstances of the parents, and the benefit of the children shall require.”
The Court continued and stated:
"An escalator clause violates both the spirit and the letter of this statute. First, it abrogates the requirement for petition by allowing the continual (here, yearly) alteration of the judgment as to amount of support. Second, and more important, it focuses exclusively on the 'circumstances’ of the paying parent while ignoring the complex of factors relating to the 'benefit of the children’ and their changing or unchanging needs. (Citations omitted.)
*262"We strike the 6% escalator clause as beyond the circuit judge’s scope of discretion.”
On remand I would not permit the trial court to utilize an escalator clause in determining the support.