Trisha and Benjamin married in 1989. They had a child in 1990. They divorced in 1995.
Their child was diagnosed early on with a condition called tuberous sclerosis, which caused him to have seizures and migraine headaches and necessitated surgery and other serious medical procedures.
The parties’ divorce decree, agreed to by stipulation and agreement of the parties, provided that Trisha would have primary custody of the child and that Benjamin would pay child support to her in the amount of $282 per month, using Utah’s child support guidelines at the time. The decree was silent as to how long the child support would continue. Although the parties knew of the child’s medical impairments, the decree was silent on that issue.
Both parties were represented by attorneys in negotiating the agreement.
The child’s medical condition improved somewhat in his teenage years, but both parties agreed he had learning disabilities. He was in special education with an Individual Education Plan (IEP). He participated in the 2009 graduation ceremony with his graduating class but did not receive a diploma.
He continued in school on an IEP non-diploma track.
Benjamin stopped paying child support shortly after the child’s graduation ceremony.
The child continued to live with Trisha and she continued to provide for his needs. He began receiving disability payments and obtained medical insurance through the Medicaid program. He also began receiving food assistance from the state.
Fast forward to 2021. Trisha filed a petition to modify, asking for child support based on the parties’ current incomes and retroactive support to the time Benjamin stopped making payments. She alleged the child’s medical condition had worsened in about 2013 and that he would never be self-supporting and would always require constant care and supervision.
Benjamin filed a motion to dismiss, which was granted by the district court.
The trial court reasoned that it did not have the authority to order that child support continue beyond the age of 21, and that the decree did not contain any specific provision that the support should continue beyond the child’s minority. The court was also concerned that the parties may have specifically bargained for the absence of such a child support lengthening provision in the decree.
Trisha appealed the court’s dismissal of her petition to modify.
The Court of Appeals reversed the decision. It noted that a parent has a legal obligation to support his or her child. The Utah Code defines a child in three ways: 1) a son or daughter under the age of eighteen who is not otherwise emancipated, married, self-supporting or a member of the U.S. armed forces, 2) a son or daughter over the age of eighteen who is enrolled in high school during the normal and expected year of graduation and is not otherwise emancipated, married, self-supporting or a member of the U.S. armed forces, and 3) a son or daughter of any age who is incapacitated from earning a living and, if able to provide some resources to the family, is not able to support self by own means. Utah Code Section 78B-12-102(7).
The Court observed that parents have an obligation to support their incapacitated child regardless of their age.
Despite this principle, Benjamin asserted three reasons why he believed the trial court was correct in dismissing Trisha’s petition.
First, he argued that the child support statute’s automatic adjustment provision operated to terminate his child support obligation. Utah Code Section 78B-12-219 provides that upon a child’s attaining the age of eighteen and graduating with his or her normal and expected high school graduating class, the child support obligation shall be automatically adjusted to reflect the number of remaining children that are due child support.
While acknowledging the force of Benjamin’s argument in most cases, this was not a garden variety case, and the Court held that it is implicit in the child support statute that support continues for an incapacitated child even beyond the age of eighteen and participation in a graduation ceremony.
The statute states that, upon the occurrence of the triggering event of reaching age eighteen or graduating high school in the normal and expected year, whichever is later, the child support obligation is automatically adjusted to reflect the number of remaining children who are owed support. The key to understanding this case, however, is that a child who is incapacitated from earning a living is due support at any age.
Secondly, Benjamin asserted that Utah Code Section 15-2-1 is prohibitive of child support continuing beyond the age of twenty-one, because that section allows a court, in exceptional or unusual circumstances, to order that child support continue until age twenty-one.
But the Court found no contradiction between this section and the section defining a child in the three ways set forth in the Code, including a son or daughter of any age who is incapacitated from earning a living. After all, Section 15-2-1 does not mention incapacitation at all, but simply permissively allows a court, in its sound discretion, to order support beyond age twenty-one in unusual circumstances.
Finally, Benjamin argued that the trial court’s dismissal was proper because the parties did not include a provision extending child support beyond the age of eighteen, and that both parties were aware of the child’s medical diagnoses at the time of the divorce.
But the Court could find no rule mandating that, just because the parties did not explicitly classify a child as disabled in an agreed upon divorce decree, that they were forever after prevented from claiming the child was incapacitated.
It should be noted that the child was only five years old at the time of the divorce, and the parties may not have known exactly how the child’s disease would progress and impact him as he grew older.
The Court tidily disposed of the trial court’s reasoning that the parties may have bargained for no support beyond the child’s age of graduation by pointing out that child support belongs to the child and cannot be airily bartered away by the parents.
The Court remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings, stating that several issues needed to be decided; namely: 1) Is the child incapacitated? 2) If so, when did the child become incapacitated? 3) If the child is incapacitated, what is the appropriate amount of child support? The place to start with this inquiry is with the statutory child support guidelines. But the Court also expressed the need to consider the extent to which the son has income of his own (such as disability payments) or can contribute financial resources to the household. Along these lines, the trial court will also need to consider the form in which child support is paid; i.e., whether directly to Trisha or in some other way (such as payment to a care facility). 4) The court will need to consider the retroactivity of any child support award.
Considering Trisha’s request that support be ordered all the way back to the date Benjamin stopped paying after the child walked with his graduating class in the pomp-and-circumstance-mortarboard-cap-and-gown-ceremony-with-Elgar’s-famously-elegant-celebratory-march-resounding-soothingly-in-the-background, should the court treat this retroactive support request as a modification or as one for enforcement? These are the tricky yet engaging issues to be taken up by the trial court.
This is an interesting case with significant implications for parents of children with significant medical impairments.
See Wadman v. Wadman, 24 UT App 69.
This material should not be construed as legal advice for any particular fact situation, but is intended for general informational purposes only. For advice specific to any individual situation, an experienced attorney should be contacted.