The issues today come out of the March 31, 2020 opinion from the First District Appellate Court. For the full opinion please go to https://courts.illinois.gov/Opinions/AppellateCourt/2020/1stDistrict/1182710.pdf . As with any maintenance and child support determination this case involves the Illinois Dissolution of Marriage Act. The Appellate Court remanded the case back to the trial court for a redetermination of child support stating that the Trial Court miscalculated the guideline support obligation.
There are other holdings in this where the Appellate Court declined to exercise jurisdiction over portions of the trial court’s order due to it not being identified in the notice of appeal, however, that is a discussion for another day.
Just to give the background a short paragraph, mainly because the background takes several pages on the opinion, the parties were married in August of 2008 and the wife filed for dissolution of marriage in October of 2017. A month after filing for dissolution of marriage, the court entered an order of protection on behalf of the wife for two years to prohibit the husband from “harassing, stalking, or physically abusing (wife).” In re the MARRIAGE OF GABRIEL and SHAMOUN, 2020 IL App 182710.
The trial court then entered an order for maintenance and child support in the amount of $1,500.00. Then, due to the husband’s noncompliance, he was ordered to pay $3,083.33 in back maintenance and child support and $1,600 in attorney fees as the court held him in contempt of court. The husband continued to fail to comply with the court orders and was ordered to pay more in attorney fees and a body attachment was issued. Again, another lesson for later, but comply with court orders.
Lesson number three in this before we even get to the main lesson. Always ask to go on record. You never know when you are going to have to appeal a case and if you have to appeal a case and don’t have a trial transcript, that is not good. You will not have a complete record and you may need some of this information. Also, if there is going to be a hearing where one of the parties is not there, make sure to put it on the record. This is just a little side note in here that I am seeing from what happened during this hearing. Some counties, like St. Clair, are super easy. There are microphones that will record and it’s easy for the judges to call the control room and put the hearing on the record. Other counties, such as Madison County take a little more prodding. You are going to have to ask to put it on the record and get a court reporter, just a tip, there is normally one over in the juvenile court. If someone is hesitant to it, i.e. judge or opposing counsel, make sure to highlight it’s going to save the client’s, the attorney’s and the judge in the future.
Now that I am off that tangent (which I am sure I will get on more later), the first step in any case for maintenance and child support purposes is to ascertain incomes. This can normally be done via looking at the last few years of gross income. In this case, the trial court found that husband’s income was not credible because it had varied so significantly. The Appellate Court found that the trial court properly determined the amount of maintenance. I will take a second post at some time to explain maintenance calculations. The Appellate Court found, however, that the trial court erred in determining child support because they did not take the maintenance amount into account when determining wife’s income and it did not deduct the maintenance amount from the husband’s gross income. This simple rule is the statute. The child support statute is 750 ILCS 5/505. Within that statute you are going to find that there are provisions relating to what is deductible and what is not when it comes to maintenance and child support calculations. These calculations have to be first applied properly prior to any deviation, either upward or downward to take place. In the case at hand, the Appellate Court found that the Trial Court did not properly calculate the child support pursuant to 750 ILCS 5/505, therefore neither the child support number nor the deviation could stand without this correction. The court remanded this portion of the appeal back to the trial court in order to properly calculate child support as defined within the statute. What will the trial court do next? Will it stick with its deviation? The trial court very well could go back, determine the correct amount of child support but stay with its number as an upward deviation providing reasoning to back it up. Just because the appellate courts reverse and remand does not mean that the trial courts won’t come up with the same outcome. In this case, however, the lesson is to always correctly determine the support numbers prior to any deviations.
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