Court Opinion

ID: 9766172
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:35:53.394012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:20.023436
License: Public Domain

Dooley, J.,
dissenting. This case went fundamentally off track when the magistrate ignored an unmodified, stipulated provision of the divorce order that specified how support would be calculated if the parties’ income exceeded the upper limit of the guidelines. As a result, plaintiff is now paying a third more in support than the order specified, based on a calculation rationale that is not consistent with the purposes or operation of the guidelines. For these reasons, I do not believe the support order can be affirmed. Nor do I believe that we can employ a new rationale on appeal to support the family court decision. Accordingly, I dissent from the Court’s plurality opinion and the concurring opinion.1
*29It is easy in this contentious litigation to get lost in the underbrush. It is particularly easy to characterize the case as one of oppressive conduct inflicted by a high earning father on his children and their mother, such that he deserves no protection of the law. There are, however, important issues of law at stake that transcend the circumstances of the parties before us. To shed light on these principles, I emphasize what I believe are the four significant events which should determine our decision.
In 1988, the Orange County Superior Court issued a divorce order based on the stipulation of the parties. Paragraph two of the order dealt extensively with child support. It required plaintiff to pay $1,379 per month in child support for the ensuing year; specified that the amount was based on the child support guidelines; described how the calculation was done; required an annual recalculation by the same method for the next two years and a biannual recalculation thereafter; and specified the effect of a child reaching eighteen years of age or completing high school, “whichever is later.” It specifically provided for how the recalculation would be accomplished if the parties’ income exceeded the upper limit of the guidelines:
If, during any recalculation of child support payments, the combined monthly gross income2 from the child support obligation worksheet (line 2) exceeds the last amount listed in the Table of Intact Family Expenditures, then the parties shall determine the average percentage of increase in the “guideline amount” for the last ten levels on the table, and apply that percentage to the amount by which the combined gross income exceeds that last amount listed.
To reinforce the methodology employed, the order provided a sample calculation based on a specified over-guideline income level. Paragraph ten of the 1988 order specified that any disputes that arise with respect to the order would be worked out first by discussion, then by mediation and finally by arbitration.
The second event occurred a year after the divorce order was issued, when the parties could not agree on the calculation for the first adjustment to be made to the divorce order. That disagreement resulted in an amended final order which submitted much of the *30dispute to an arbitrator and provided that future support amounts would be determined by a specified accounting firm under a methodology established by the arbitrator. The arbitrator did specify a simplified method of making the calculation in cases where the parties’ income exceeded the guidelines:
To the extent that these parties’ combined available income exceeds the guideline figures, 23.7% of such additional income shall be the additional family expenditure amount. Each party shall then pay his or her proportional share of the family expenditure in excess of the guideline amount.
Again, directions were supplied to make the calculations, and they specifically provided that if the combined income exceeded that provided in the guideline tables for converting gross income to net income, then “68%” of gross income was considered to be net. I think it is clear that the arbitrator did not create a “new” method in this decision, but instead performed the calculation required by the 1988 order, derived the appropriate percentage of income for the income above the guideline maximum and substituted the percentage for the calculation from which it was derived.3
*31The third event was the February 1995 decision of the family court modifying the initial divorce order. That decision was specific as to what it modified. It stated:

ORDER

It is hereby ORDERED and ADJUDGED:
1. Paragraph 10 is hereby modified to exclude disputes which arise with paragraph 2.
2. Dr. Harris’s motion for contempt is DENIED.
3. Each party is responsible for his or her own attorney’s fees.
Relying on vague language in the family court’s discussion of the case, the Court’s opinion states that the family court also modified paragraph two to eliminate the provision on how to calculate support if the parties’ income is. over the guidelines. That conclusion is impossible to reconcile with the order, which very clearly states that only paragraph ten is modified. Moreover, no grounds to modify paragraph two were presented to the family court; defendant’s argument was that plaintiff refused to submit to the alternative-dispute-resolution mechanisms provided in paragraph ten.
The fourth event is the decision of the magistrate, which ignored the method the parties had agreed upon for determining the support level should the parties’ income exceed the guideline limit. Rather than employing the agreed-upon formula that used the guideline amount up to the maximum level and 23.7% of net available income thereafter, she adopted a whole new method that imposed a much higher support order on plaintiff.
There is no question that the support calculation provisions in the original divorce order, the amended order and the arbitrator’s decision are valid. As the court’s opinion emphasizes, the family court has discretion in setting support when total income goes beyond the guidelines. These orders fall well within that discretion. The magistrate and family court should have enforced these orders; their failure to do so was error.
As I understand it, the plurality opinion has three answers to the failure to enforce the original orders and calculate support pursuant *32to them.4 First, it states that plaintiff failed to raise their applicability below and cannot do so here. Both in the family court and in this Court, plaintiff argued in his brief that the magistrate could not modify the original support order to create an arrearage. Furthermore, plaintiff argued before the magistrate that there were no grounds to modify the original order.5 I think this is sufficient preservation to allow us to consider the issue. The reason why we refuse to address issues for the first time on appeal — because the trial court was denied the opportunity to deal with them, see Duke v. Duke, 140 Vt. 543, 545, 442 A.2d 460, 462 (1982) — does not apply where the issue was before both the magistrate and the trial court at least to resolve the arrearage. In any event, plaintiff clearly preserved with respect to the arrearage, and the Court has ignored the argument in affirming the arrearage order.6 Second, the plurality opinion asserts that (1) the family court had jurisdiction to modify the method of calculation of the support order in February 1995, and (2) the family court modified paragraph two by deleting it, and plaintiff then faded to appeal that order. I set out the order of the family court above. It explicitly modifies only paragraph ten of the divorce order. Indeed, the language chosen — modifying paragraph ten “to exclude disputes which arise with paragraph 2” — states clearly that the court intended that disputes over the amount of child support would *33continue to be governed by paragraph two. Moreover, the only grounds for modification presented and accepted was that the alternative-dispute-resolution process had broken down. There was no suggestion of changed circumstances with respect to the support calculation. See Kilduff v. Willey, 150 Vt. 552, 555, 554 A.2d 677, 679 (1988) (inability of parents to get along did not present change of circumstances to modify physical custody and visitation order, but created sufficient change of circumstances to modify award of joint legal rights and responsibilities order).
It is telling that the magistrate did not rely on a change of circumstances determination of the family court in deciding to impose a new support calculation method at variance with paragraph two of the divorce order. In her oral decision, the magistrate stated:
the court does find [that a] real, substantial and [un]anticipated [change of] circumstances was supported at the time of filing in February 4 . . .of the motion to modify, and that at that, the court finds that the change there is simply the change in the increase of the plaintiff’s income substantially over the last time child support was reviewed, as well as the subsequent change on June 16, 1994, when Michael graduated from high school.
Although neither the plurality opinion nor the concurrence address the merits of this decision, I think it is clear that it is erroneous because the divorce order explicitly specified the effect of changed income and the graduation from high school of one of the children.
I am at a loss to see how the vague sentence cited by the plurality opinion can have any effect on paragraph two, in light of an explicit order that did not affect that paragraph at all, except to confirm that it would govern future disputes. The plurality opinion appears to read the sentence as saying that the magistrate could ignore paragraph two, but the arbitrator could not. In fact, it probably means the opposite because, as the court stated, the magistrate is bound “as in all cases, by law,” and the arbitrator probably had more freedom.
Finally, the plurality states that we cannot enforce paragraph two of the original divorce order because it has been replaced by the arbitrator’s award through the terms of the amended order. At best, this is an argument for enforcing the arbitrator’s award; it does not support a decision to enforce neither. In any event, the formula stated in the original divorce order and that stated in the arbitrator’s award reach the same result.
*34I believe there is no justification for deviating from the method of calculating plaintiff’s support obligation to which defendant stipulated and the court ordered in settlement of the parties’ divorce. Since I cannot conclude that the error is unpreserved, I would reverse and remand for a child support award consistent with the divorce order.
Even if there were no preexisting order to which this award must conform, I would reverse the award. As the plurality opinion acknowledges, we held in Smith v. Stewart, 165 Vt. 364, 372, 684 A.2d 265, 270 (1996), that any method used for calculating support awards for families with incomes above the guideline maxima “must reflect the principles behind the guidelines.” In two respects, the child support order on appeal is inconsistent with the principles behind the guidelines.
The first is that the award is based on plaintiff’s gross income rather than on his net available income. In 1990, the Legislature modified the calculation of support orders based on parents’ income to use “available income,” rather than “gross income.” Compare 15 V.S.A. § 653(1), (9), as added by 1989, No. 220 (Adj. Sess.), § 16 with 15 V.S.A. § 653(5), (9), as added by 1985, No. 180 (Adj. Sess.), § 1. The purpose of this change was to give parents the benefit of FICA taxes and state and federal income taxes before considering income, recognizing that tax burdens vary even for persons with the same gross income. Thus, the statute now provides that the “total support obligation” of the parents is based on the “amounts derived from the support guideline appropriate to the parties’ available income.” 15 V.S.A. § 653(9).
In this case, the magistrate refused to use available income for the support calculation. Based on the percentage of income established as the support award, the use of gross income had the effect of increasing plaintiff’s support burden by roughly a third over that established in the divorce order. Moreover, when two parents have taxable income, the use of pre-tax income to calculate a support award has the effect of discriminating against the higher-income parent who normally will be in a higher tax bracket and pay a higher share of income in taxes.7
The magistrate’s only justification for using gross income was that it was complicated to determine plaintiff’s after-tax income because *35of his financial circumstances.8 The Legislature necessarily introduced this complexity when it required the use of after-tax income amounts. The magistrate’s rationale was wholly inconsistent with a principle of the guideline system.9
The second inconsistency is of even greater concern. Although defendant earned steady income as a teacher, the magistrate ordered that this income not be considered to the extent it is less than $40,000 per year. Because defendant’s salary is well below the threshold, the order exempted all her income from consideration.10
The applicable statute provides that “the total child support obligation shall be divided between the parents in proportion to their respective available incomes,” id. § 656(a), and requires the noncustodial parent to pay his or her share to the custodial parent. This is an essential principle of the guideline system. Indeed, it appears that the Legislature intended for this subsection to apply at every income level because it contains fundamental requirements for support orders that are universally applicable.11
*36The only rationale the magistrate gave for ignoring the regular earned income of defendant is that she also ignored certain intermittent consulting income of plaintiff. She failed to find the amount of plaintiff’s net consulting income,12 but concluded that it would be wholly dedicated to the college tuition of the parties’ oldest child. Plaintiff had previously assumed paying this child’s tuition above his support obligation. I believe that the failure to consider defendant’s income was inconsistent with the principle of the guideline statute and cannot be affirmed.
In 1988, these parties settled the method for calculating child support, and nothing has changed to make that method unjust or inappropriate. There is no doubt that these parties have been unable to get along, and plaintiff bears the brunt of the responsibility for failure to abide by alternative-dispute-resolution mechanisms that were intended to work out their differences, cheaply and informally. Unfortunately, the family court’s response was to greatly increase plaintiff’s child support obligation, without justification, rather than enforcing the underlying order and creating new and effective enforcement methods for the future. Because I think this response was unjust, and at variance with important aspects of the child support guideline system the Legislature has adopted, I dissent.13 I am authorized to state that Justice Allen joins in this dissent.

I agree with Part VI of the Court’s opinion that the magistrate has the power to award attorney’s fees, although I would reverse the award in this ease and remand it for reconsideration in light of the proper resolution of the merits of the motion to modify child support.

At the time of the divorce order, child support calculations were based on the gross incomes of the parents. As discussed in the text, the Legislature modified the system in 1990 to base support calculations on available income.

 There is a small variance between the method provided in the divorce order and the method in the arbitrator’s award. The arbitrator’s award required plaintiff to pay 23.7% of his available income for three children. The divorce order would have required him to pay 24.1% of available income.
The Court’s opinion claims that the arbitrator “abandoned the extrapolation formula,” adding underlining to emphasize the point. It also finds that the arbitrator’s award shows that extrapolation is not required. The opinion has mischaracterized the arbitrator’s award.
There never was an extrapolation order in this case, and the arbitrator never abandoned an order that never existed. The divorce order specified that if the combined income of the parties exceeded the guideline income maximum, a uniform percentage would be applied to the extra income to determine the amount of it that would go to child support. That percentage was to be calculated by averaging the percentages specified in the last ten levels of the guideline table. The arbitrator went to the tables, made the calculation specified by the divorce order and produced a uniform percentage of 23.7%.
The Court’s opinion also suggests that the arbitrator’s decision deviated from the original support provision by setting a uniform percentage “regardless of the number of children below the age of eighteen.” The amended final order that submitted most of the dispute to the arbitrator provided that the recalculation necessary when a child reached eighteen years of age would be performed by the accounting firm. Since there was no specified role for the arbitrator in this calculation, the arbitrator’s decision did not discuss the effect of a reduction in the number of children covered by the support order. The arbitrator’s decision does not deviate from the original support award.
Because the arbitrator’s award and the original divorce order produce the same *31result, the claim in the Court’s opinion that father “never argued for enforcement of the arbitrator’s award” raises a meaningless technicality.

 The concurrence comes up with a fourth answer — that there was a sufficient shift in circumstances to justify modification based on father’s “persistent bad faith.” If one agrees with the plurality opinion, this ground adds nothing because the family court modified the child support calculation on this basis, and plaintiff never appealed. If, however, I am right that the family court never modified the child support calculation provision, the point of the concurrence is irrelevant because neither the family court nor the magistrate modified the support calculation on this ground. The court has discretion in determining whether there has been a change of circumstances, see Gates v. Gates, 168 Vt. 64, 67-68, 716 A.2d 794, 797 (1998), and we have no idea whether either forum would have found a change of circumstances to modify the child support calculation based on the theory in the concurrence. Unless the concurrence is prepared to hold that the family court was required as a matter of law to modify the support amount based on its theory, the alternative ground cannot be used to affirm the magistrate’s calculation.

 In his request for findings to the magistrate, plaintiff proposed a finding that no “real, substantial and unanticipated change of circumstances existed on February 8, 1994 supporting a modification of child support pursuant to 15 VS.A. § 660(a), (b) or (e).”

 The plurality opinion statement that father raised the applicability of the 1988 order for the first time at oral argument is not consistent with the record. After explaining the 1988 order, appellant’s initial brief, submitted months before the oral argument, argued that the magistrate could not modify the support amount based on increases in plaintiff’s income because the divorce decree anticipated changes in income and specified how they would be dealt with.

 The use of gross income also allows the concurrence to claim that the mother’s income was only a quarter of the father’s income, even though the gap in available income was much smaller.

 The arbitrator eliminated this complexity by calculating plaintiff’s available income as a percentage of gross income and requiring that the percentage, 68%, be used for plaintiff’s income in the future. In view of the parties stipulation to the arbitration order, I believe that the magistrate could have used that percentage unless it was shown to be substantially erroneous.
Alternatively, the magistrate could have required the parties to exchange tax returns so each could determine after-tax income. Although plaintiff objected to sharing tax returns so as not to disclose the financial circumstances of his current wife, the returns were produced and were before the magistrate.

As the plurality opinion states, the magistrate found that use of gross income was required by the guideline principle that support calculation must be easy and predictable. I cannot accept the view, endorsed by this Court, that a general guideline principle can be used to override a specific legislative mandate on how to calculate support obligations.

 At the time of the magistrate’s hearing, defendant had begun a new job paying her $29,000 per year.

 The plurality construes § 656(a) and (d) as exempting cases where available income exceeds the guideline maxima from the requirement of (a) that the support obligation be divided based on the respective incomes of the parents. I believe this construction is wrong. Statutes which are part of a common scheme, that is, in pari materia, must be read together. See State v. Fuller, 163 Vt. 523, 527, 660 A.2d 302, 305 (1995) (in pari materia is a statutory construction technique that should be used in appropriate cases). Section 656(a) contains its own exceptions, and there is nothing in its language to suggest that cases under § 656(d) are also exempt from its mandate. Nor is there any reason to exempt (d) cases from the mandate of (a). Thus, I believe that § 656(a) requires the mandate to base the support order on the income of both parties even if their income exceeds guideline maxima.
In reaching the opposite conclusion, the plurality opinion relies on an irrelevant provision that allows the family court to deviate from an amount determined by the *36guidelines based on a number of factors, including the financial resources of the custodial parent. 15 VS.A. § 659(a)(2). This is not a ease involving deviation from a guideline amount.

 The magistrate found that plaintiff’s income from consulting was $15,000 per year, but the money had gone to plaintiff’s employer and did not provide additional income to plaintiff. Plaintiff changed jobs just before the magistrate’s hearing and, in the new employment arrangement, would be able to keep the consulting income. Plaintiff estimated the income to be about $23,000 per year with about half of that for expense reimbursement. The magistrate accepted the gross receipts figure but did not find how much of that was payment for services.

I cannot accept Justice Morse’s urging that “we relax such painstaking oversight of child support decisions,” 168 Vt. at 26, 714 A.2d at 635, in the context of this case. As Justice Morse recognized in dissent in Ainsworth v. Ainsworth, 154 Vt. 103, 117, 574 A.2d 772, 781 (1990), the Legislature has “constrained” the discretion of the trial court to deviate from the statutory scheme. Thus, the guideline system is “designed to give child support determinations a measure of predictability and equality” rather than basing decisions on the family court’s “individual judgment as to what is fair, given all the facts and circumstances of each case.” Id. at 120, 574 A.2d at 782.