September 6, 2024
Child Support, “Automatic” Modification?
I’ve drafted hundreds of divorce agreements, whether as one spouse’s lawyer or as the couple’s mediator. One issue that frequently arises is the extent to which we want the divorce agreement to address future changes in the financial or personal situations of either parent or any children. There can be value in providing for the unknown at the time of divorce to avoid later conflict or the need to return to court. But locking divorced persons into an arrangement that doesn’t work because the changes after the divorce couldn’t be properly anticipated or even if anticipated couldn’t be properly addressed in the divorce agreement, can result in even more conflict.
A July 2, 2024 decision by the Connecticut Court of Appeals, is an example of the latter. In that case, M.S. v. M.S., 226 Conn. App. 482, the couple’s 2017 agreement which the court made an order, provided for a fixed amount of child support. Thereafter, “child support will be modified based on the [child] support guidelines.”
Does this mean that a parent could simply recompute child support using the Child Support Guidelines in 2019 and on his own decrease the amount he paid as the father argued? Or rather, as mother argued, the child support amount would remain unchanged until one parent filed a motion, returned to court, submitted the newly completed Child Support Guidelines Worksheet and the court then officially changed the amount?
Here, the trial court agreed with the father’s interpretation. Mom appealed.
The Appellate Court was persuaded by Mom’s argument. It found that the child support obligation was set and fixed until further modification by the court, in other words until a court made a new child support order replacing the earlier order. (Whether the new order resulted from a contested hearing or simply the court’s adoption of the parent’s new agreement wasn’t important.) The Appellate Court stated that interpreting the original orders “child support will be modified based on the [child] support guidelines” would condone the father’s unilateral modification based on his own understanding and that would be inconsistent with the purpose and statutory scheme regarding child support.
The lesson here is first that not every possible post -divorce change should be addressed in the divorce agreement. Second, if the agreement had included a clearly written procedure for recomputing the Guidelines and submitting them to court for approval, perhaps mom and dad could have avoided years of post- divorce conflict.
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