Opinion
No. 5-798 / 05-0378
Filed December 21, 2005
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, Jon C. Fister, Judge.
The Department of Human Services, as assignee of a parent's child support, appeals a district court order reducing the support obligation by fifty percent. REVERSED AND REMANDED.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Patricia A. McGivern, Assistant Attorney General, for appellant.
Edward Gallagher of Gallagher, Langlas Gallagher, P.C., Waterloo, for appellee Stephanie Sanders.
David Kuehner of the Law Office of Laird Luhring, Waverly, for appellee Billy Dean Sanders.
Considered by Zimmer, P.J., and Miller and Vaitheswaran, JJ.
The Department of Human Services, as assignee of a parent's child support, asserts the district court erred in reducing the support obligation by fifty percent. We reverse and remand.
I. Background Facts and Proceedings
Stephanie and Billy Dean Sanders married and had one child. Several years later, Stephanie petitioned for a dissolution. At the time she filed the petition, she was earning wages. Several months later, she began receiving public assistance.
Based on her receipt of public assistance, the Iowa Department of Human Services notified the district court that support payments were to be assigned to the State. The case proceeded to trial without the Department's involvement.
Following trial, the district court awarded the parents joint physical care of their child. The court then calculated the parents' respective child support obligations, assuming each was a non-custodial parent. To arrive at Stephanie's support obligation, the court used her net monthly income as disclosed in a worksheet filed with her petition. This resulted in a child support obligation for her of $257.07 per month. As for Billy, the court disclosed that he had net monthly income of $1,019, resulting in a child support obligation of $229.37 per month. Because the parents were to share care, the court offset these respective obligations to arrive at a net payment amount of $27.70 per month owed by Stephanie to Billy.
Upon learning of the order, the Department moved to disallow the offset, asserting "[t]he offset payment provision is not appropriate since the child support has been assigned to the State." The district court agreed with the Department and found that offsetting support is "neither feasible nor appropriate in this case." However, the court continued: "If support is not offset and each of the parties has placement of the child 50% of the time, the monthly child support payments should be reduced by 50%." The court ordered Stephanie to pay Billy $128.54 per month and Billy to pay Stephanie $114.69 per month.
The State moved to reconsider the latter part of the order. The district court denied the motion and the State appealed. II. Reduction of Support Obligations
The post-trial record reflects that the Department's child support assignment was terminated, effective April 1, 2005. The Department filed a motion to reinstate the offset provisions, which the district court granted on May 18, 2005, retroactive to April 1, 2005. Therefore the relevant time frame for purposes of this appeal is from February 9, 2005 to April 1, 2005.
The only issue before us is whether the district court erred in refusing to reconsider its reduction of the parents' child support obligations by fifty percent. As the obligations arise from an equitable order, our review of this issue is de novo. State ex rel. Heidick v. Balch, 533 N.W.2d 209, 211 (Iowa 1995).
The district court gave several reasons for refusing to reconsider the reduction in child support. First, the court stated that it was equitable to reduce child support where parents shared "about equal time" with the child. The court noted, by analogy, that the child support guidelines contemplated "a reduction in support based on the number of overnight stays a child has with the non-custodial parent." Second, the court suggested a deviation from the guideline amounts was appropriate, stating:
If this does violate the child support guidelines, the court finds that it should be done to avoid an unjust or inappropriate result and to do justice between the parties.
Finally, the court reasoned that, where the parties were sharing care equally, the guideline amount of support amounted to a subsidy of the other parent's expenses. The court stated:
[W]hen each of the parties is charged with maintaining a separate home for their children, each of them is in the best position to decide how their income should be spent on maintaining the home for the child while in that parent's home 50% of the time and neither should have to subsidize the other parent's home expenses for the other 50% of the time.
We begin by acknowledging the apparent inequity of requiring Billy to pay the guideline-prescribed amount of support when he has the child fifty percent of the time and would not be required to pay any support to Stephanie if the support obligations were offset. Cf. Balch, 533 N.W.2d at 212 ("[W]e are sympathetic to [the payor's] position"); State ex. rel. Mack v. Mack, 479 N.W.2d 327, 329 (Iowa 1992) ("[W]e are not unsympathetic to [the payor's] situation."). However, the Iowa supreme court has held that this type of inequity does not override the State's interest in recouping its public assistance payments as assignee of one of the parent's support payments. Balch, 533 N.W.2d at 212 ("[T]he State is entitled to be subrogated to the full amount of child support"); Mack, 479 N.W.2d at 329 ("[T]he state is entitled to recover in its own right without regard to the terms of court orders affecting the rights and obligations of the parents"). Therefore, we are compelled to reject the district court's first ground for refusing to reconsider the reduction.
As for the second reason cited by the district court, we agree that the court has authority to deviate from the guidelines in certain enumerated circumstances. See Iowa Ct. R. 9.11. However, even if a reduction would "do justice" between the parents as the district court concluded, the Iowa Supreme court has held that the State's rights to assignment "remain unaffected by any difficulties the parties are having in meeting their individual support obligations to each other." Balch, 533 N.W.2d at 212. Therefore, deviation was not appropriate in this case.
Finally, we have considered the district court's rationale that neither parent "should have to subsidize the other parent's home expenses for the other 50% of the time." In State ex. rel. Dep't of Human Serv. v. Burt, 469 N.W.2d 669, 670-71 (Iowa 1991), the Iowa Supreme court rejected a similar argument and reversed a district court ruling that departed from the guideline-prescribed support amount based on the payor's expenses. The court stated, "[i]n the absence of special circumstances, the reasonable living expenses of the noncustodial parent do not provide a ground for departing from the guidelines." 469 N.W.2d at 670. Accord In re Marriage of Okland, 699 N.W.2d 260, 269 (Iowa 2005).
We acknowledge that the argument concerning expenses is somewhat different where the parents share equal time with the child. See Marygold S. Melli and Patricia R. Brown, The Economics of Shared Custody: Developing an Equitable Formula for Dual Residence, 31 Hou. L. Rev. 543, 559-60 (1994).
On our de novo review, we agree with the Department that the parents' child support obligations should not have been reduced. We also agree that the district court acted inequitably in denying the Department's motion to reconsider that aspect of the earlier ruling.
III. Disposition
We reverse the order denying the Department's motion to reconsider the reduction of the parents' respective child support obligations. We remand for an order authorizing the Department to collect Billy's guideline-prescribed child support obligation of $229.37 per month up to the amount of its public assistance payments to Stephanie, for the period from February 9, 2005 to April 1, 2005.