Facts: Husband and Wife are the parents of three children.

When they separated after 10 years of marriage, they signed an Agreement requiring Husband to pay child support of $667 per child per month, i.e., $2001 each month, until the oldest child is emancipated, at which point the obligation would be recalculated by the trial court per the Child Support Guidelines. The Agreement expressly provides that this obligation “is only subject to modification by a court of competent jurisdiction upon a showing of a substantial change of circumstances.”

Two years later, Husband filed for divorce and asked the trial court to recalculate child support based on “the parties’ current financial circumstances.” Husband argued “substantial change of circumstances” was just a rephrasing of “significant variance.”

Husband testified he was being involuntarily separated from the military because of service-connected injuries, including traumatic brain injuries that caused behavioral issues. He testified about the disability benefits he would receive and his post-military plans. Also, Wife’s monthly income had changed from zero dollars to $1000.

The trial court modified Husband’s monthly child support obligation from $2001 to $1184.

Wife filed a motion to alter or amend the trial court’s ruling because the Agreement is enforceable as a contract. She cited several Tennessee cases holding that a voluntary agreement between parents to pay more child support than the law requires is enforceable as any other contract.

The trial court reversed itself, holding that Husband’s child support obligation of $2001 could not be modified because he contractually agreed to pay an amount of child support exceeding his legal duty.

Husband appealed.

On Appeal: The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court.

Tennessee law requires a “significant variance” between the current child support amount and the proposed amount before child support can be modified. Tennessee law defines that as a 15% change from the current amount to the new amount (for low-income obligors, the threshold is 7.5%). If there’s not a 15% difference, then child support is not modifiable at that time.

Parents are free to contract to support children after they are emancipated, and those agreements will be enforced as contracts. For example, a parent may contract as part of a divorce settlement to pay for a child’s college education.

However, any agreement regarding the support of a minor child remains modifiable by a trial court as long as there is a “significant variance,” as described above.

Because the modification at issue here involved support for a minor child, the Court found the trial court erred in granting Wife’s motion to alter or amend:

The trial court reasoned that Husband agreed to pay child support over and above the basic guideline amounts and that the support was thus nonmodifiable. This ruling is erroneous for two reasons. First, it is true that parties may agree to child support in excess of what the guidelines require. Nonetheless, such an agreement does not remain nonmodifiable in perpetuity; rather, once a contractual agreement for child support merges into a final decree of divorce, the child support provision is modifiable unless it is a “provision extending a parent’s child-support obligation past a child’s majority age.”

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The trial court’s initial ruling, in which it considered the parties’ current circumstances and determined that a modification was in order, was correct. Husband did not agree to provide child support past the children reaching the age of majority; accordingly, the trial court’s ruling that the child support obligation cannot be modified, notwithstanding a substantial change in circumstances, is contrary to the case law….

Second, even applying the trial court’s logic that the Agreement retained its contractual nature, the plain language of the Agreement provides that a modification is possible…. The Agreement itself states that a court of competent jurisdiction may modify the child support obligation.

The trial court conducted a final hearing at which it heard extensive testimony from the parties about their current circumstances. Afterwards, the trial court determined that a substantial change of circumstances had occurred and that a modification was warranted. That initial ruling is wholly supported by the record, and it is unclear [] why the trial court reversed course. Simply put, the trial court got it right the first time, and Wife’s motion to alter or amend should have been denied as to this issue.

The trial court’s ruling that Husband’s child support obligation may not be modified under any circumstances cannot be squared with either the law or the Agreement’s language.

The Court reversed the trial court’s judgment and reinstated the trial court’s original ruling that modified Husband’s child support obligation.

Source: Howard v. Howard (Tennessee Court of Appeals, Middle Section, July 30, 2024).

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