Cash v. Cash
| Decision Date | 05 February 1962 |
| Docket Number | No. 5-2592,5-2592 |
| Citation | 234 Ark. 603,353 S.W.2d 348 |
| Parties | Henry J. CASH, Appellant, v. Ethel CASH, Appellee. |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Terral & Rawlings and Gail O. Matthews, Little Rock, for appellant.
Wayne Foster, Little Rock, for appellee.
This appeal presents a question which precedent has left unanswered in this, as well as every other jurisdiction: Do Social Security payments from the account of a father to his dependent son displace court ordered support payments?
The appellant, Henry J. Cash, and the appellee, Ethel Cash were formerly husband and wife, living together as such for some eighteen years, their marriage ending in a divorce in May of 1959. Two children were born to them, a daughter who is now married, and a son, twelve years of age at the commencement of the present litgation. The divorce decree awarded custody of the minor son to his mother along with support payments from the father of $32.50 per week.
Ethel Cash remarried in June of 1959, and in September Henry Cash petitioned for a modification of the decree to reduce his support payments. The Court reduced his payments to $15.00 per week. In February, 1960 Mrs. Cash's second marriage was terminated by the death of her husband.
In January of 1961, Mr. Cash having reached the age of 65, retired and applied for Social Security benefits for himself and his son. The following month the son began to receive Social Security benefits at the rate of $60.00 a month. Mr. Cash, thinking that the Social Security benefits which he had caused the son to receive relieved him of his court ordered payment, stopped the $15.00 weekly payments to the son. Shortly after the support payments were halted, Mrs. Cash filed a motion stating that Mr. Cash had an increase in income and requesting an increase in his weekly payments. Mr. Cash filed a counter-petition alleging that he had retired, that both he and his son were drawing Social Security benefits, and requesting that he be relieved from paying the $15.00 payments.
Upon a hearing of the case, the Chancellor refused to allow the Social Security payments to the son to displace the support payments, but did reduce the payments to $10.00 per week. The appellant now brings the matter to this Court claiming that such refusal by the Chancellor constituted reversible error.
Mr. Cash, before his retirement, was a long-time employee of the Porocel Company where he worked as a night watchman earning in excess of $5,000 a year. Also he had some income from rental houses which he owned. This was his financial condition at the time of the original divorce decree which ordered him to pay $32.50 per week to his former wife for the support of their son. Upon the remarriage of Mrs. Cash, the Court reduced these payments to $15.00 per week.
At the time of the hearing on the motion now under consideration, the appellant testified that his monthly income was as follow: Social Security $120.00, payments from the John Hancock Insurance Company $26.70, rent from four houses in which he had a life estate $145.00, and $20.42 from the Phillips Corporation. This is a total monthly income of $312.12. However, Mr. Cash also testified that he makes monthly payments on his debts which total $205.03, and that he also pays weekly room and board to a daughter with whom he is living in the amount of $8.00 per week. His monthly payments are toward the retirement of debts which he incurred in buying clothes for himself, his former wife and his son, for upkeep on his rent houses, money which he borrowed to pay his taxes, a mortgage on the house which he gave to his wife for life, and a note to the bank representing the financing of a truck.
If Mr. Cash were not allowed credit for the Social Security payments to his son and were forced to make the support payments ordered in the court below, his total monthly outlay including payments on his debts and room and board, taken...
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