Court Opinion

ID: 9852629
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:34:00.174313+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:31.181470
License: Public Domain

Shanahan, J.,
concurring.
There are satisfactory and unsatisfactory aspects of the majority’s opinion.
The majority’s disposition of the request for increased child support is correct. The record shows Dr. Graber’s net income *823has generally decreased since 1980, the year the child support was ordered. There is no showing that Dr. Graber’s earning capacity increased before July 1984, when the application for modification was heard.
En route to the correct disposition, the majority has formulated an ill-advised principle which will undoubtedly produce dire consequences in an action for modification of a child support order: Because parents involved in dissolution proceedings contemplate that their children will “grow older and that their needs will therefore change,” advance in children’s ages with concomitant changes in the children’s needs never justifies modification of a child support order. To support that proposition the majority relies on Albers v. Albers, 213 Neb. 471, 329 N.W.2d 567 (1983), and Cooper v. Cooper, 219 Neb. 64, 361 N.W.2d 202 (1985), which held in substance that a contemplated change of circumstances does not justify modification of an order entered in a dissolution proceeding. Neither Albers nor Cooper involved requested modification of a child support order but, rather, requested modification of an alimony award.
In Pfeiffer v. Pfeiffer, 201 Neb. 56, 266 N.W.2d 82 (1978), this court judicially noticed the contemporary condition of the economy in determining that child support previously ordered was less than the current, actual cost of caring for a child, and further noted “as the ages of the children increase, the expense of care is generally greater.” Id. at 58, 266 N.W.2d at 84. In Pfeiffer the increased cost of maintaining children as they grew older and increased income to the parent responsible for payment of child support were “sufficiently substantial changes of circumstances” justifying a modification and increase in child support. Id. at 58-59, 266 N.W.2d at 84. See, also, Rubottom v. Rubottom, 185 Neb. 39, 173 N.W.2d 447 (1970).
This court in Grannell v. Grannell, 138 Neb. 456, 460, 293 N.W. 280, 281 (1940), recognized that “provisions for the maintenance of children in divorce cases are for the benefit of the child or children and not for the benefit of the parent.” In Grannell vie also held that an advance in the age of a child, from 17 months at entry of the child support order to 7 years of age at *824the hearing for modification of that order, was a sufficient change in circumstances because the child “needs care of a different kind now and it is somewhat more expensive than it was at the age of 17 months.” Id. at 460, 293 N.W. at 282.
Several jurisdictions, 27 according to the annotation at 89 A.L.R.2d 7, § 22 (1963 & Supp. 1985), agree that the natural increase in needs of children as they advance in age justifies an increase in the amount of child support, or is a factor to be seriously considered, where the parent obligated to pay child support has an increased ability to pay support greater than the amount originally ordered. Such justification for modification and increased child support exists independent of any nationwide or general increase in the cost of living or decrease in the purchasing power of the dollar. Accordingly, most courts acknowledge a fiscal fact of life — there is a natural increase in a child’s needs as the child’s age advances. New needs of a child arise out of the fact that a child simply grows older.
Generally, as indicated by the majority, in dissolution proceedings final resolution of property matters and the parties’ personal rights by agreement between a husband and wife is a desirable goal. Previously, maintenance for a child was a child’s benefit determined by two essential factors— reasonable needs of a child and earning capacity of the parent judicially obligated to pay child support. As a result of the majority’s conclusion that a “poor choice” or bad bargain in an agreed amount of child support “cannot be corrected by seeking a modification of the original agreement,” reasonable needs of the child to be supported have become insignificant even to the point of irrelevance. Child support is not a matter to be bartered to inadequacy at some parental bargaining table in dissolution proceedings. If a settlement agreement has the monolithic effect suggested by the majority, serious doubt is cast upon the role and duty of a court regarding continuing jurisdiction in matters of child support.
A child’s transition from diapers to discotheques is an expensive journey in life. To hold that parental contemplation of a child’s increase of age adversely affects a postdecree application for increased child support is an unrealistic approach to the very real problem of rising costs in raising *825children. While judicial realism may vanish, reality will not.
Boslaugh and Grant, JJ., join in this concurrence.