Fredrickson v. Button
| Decision Date | 14 September 2018 |
| Docket Number | Supreme Court No. S-15857 |
| Citation | 426 P.3d 1047 |
| Parties | Shelley FREDRICKSON, Appellant, v. Forest J. BUTTON, Appellee. |
| Court | Alaska Supreme Court |
Allison Mendel, Mendel Colbert & Associates, Inc., Anchorage, for Appellant.
Maurice N. Ellis, Law Office of Maurice N. Ellis, Anchorage, for Appellee.
Before: Stowers, Chief Justice, Winfree, Maassen, and Bolger, Justices. [Fabe and Carney, Justices, not participating.]
Forest Button and Shelley Fredrickson never married, but they had one child together. Button and Fredrickson separated in September 2006. From September 2006 until January 2013 neither sought a formal custody order or a child support order. Instead, they had an informal arrangement to share their son’s expenses. Button filed a complaint for custody in January 2013. The parties participated in a settlement conference and entered into an agreement resolving all custody issues, but the parties reserved issues of prospective and retrospective child support for later resolution by the court.
The superior court found that Fredrickson was the obligor parent from September 2006 through August 2010, and calculated her child support obligation based on Alaska Civil Rule 90.3. The court then used the shared custody child support rules in Rule 90.3 to calculate the parties’ respective child support obligations from September 2010 until 2013. For purposes of these calculations the court included as income $300,000 Fredrickson received from the Japanese government in connection with the death of her brother, who died in the 2011 Japanese tsunami. The court also calculated a prospective child support award. It found that from 2014 onward Fredrickson had been voluntarily unemployed, and it imputed income to her to calculate this prospective award. Following the court’s orders, Button filed a motion for attorney’s fees, which the court granted.
Fredrickson appeals. We hold that (1) the court’s finding that the money from the Japanese government was paid out in three annual installments was clearly erroneous; (2) there is insufficient evidence to determine whether the money should be considered income for purposes of calculating a retrospective child support award; (3) the court did not err in finding that a deviation from retrospective child support calculations under Rule 90.3 was unwarranted; and (4) the court’s decisions to impute income to Fredrickson and not to impute income to Button were not clearly erroneous.
Forest Button and Shelley Fredrickson never married, but they had one son in 2003. Button and Fredrickson lived together from November 2002 until they separated in September 2006.
From September 2006 until Button filed his complaint for child custody in January 2013 neither party sought a formal custody order. Instead, upon separation they agreed to a schedule where Fredrickson cared for their son every Saturday when she finished work until his bedtime the following Monday—at that time, Fredrickson worked as a delivery driver five days a week, beginning at 5 a.m.—and Button cared for him the rest of the week. Fredrickson also had visitation on Thursday evenings. In 2010 Fredrickson’s brother volunteered to care for their son when Fredrickson was at work in the early mornings. Button and Fredrickson later agreed to a week-on/week-off schedule, beginning in the summer of 2010.
There was no child support order in effect from 2006 until 2014; the first child support order was the superior court’s Order Regarding Child Support Payments, one of the orders at issue in this appeal. Before the litigation began the parties had an informal agreement to share their son’s expenses, and they executed an agreement providing that neither party owed the other child support. After moving out of their shared home Fredrickson made monthly payments of $660 to Button to cover their son’s expenses. Fredrickson also included their son on her medical insurance as a dependent, and she paid the co-pays related to his medical needs. Fredrickson also paid for his other activities, such as karate classes, swimming lessons, and football team expenses. In the spring of 2007 Fredrickson stopped paying Button a fixed dollar amount, but continued to pay some of their son’s expenses directly.
In March 2011 Fredrickson’s younger brother went missing in Japan; he had been killed in the 2011 tsunami. Fredrickson quit her delivery job when her brother went missing. She testified that she was unable to work due to her grief and depression. In early 2012 Fredrickson felt well enough to work part-time as a bartender and also became heavily involved in charity work.
Fredrickson worked as a bartender for less than a year, working one to two days per week at the beginning of the year and three to four days per week toward the end of the year. Since leaving her bartender position Fredrickson has not worked for pay, instead appearing to support herself mainly from payments issued from a family trust—the annual amount she received from this trust varied from year to year, and Fredrickson had no control over the amount or timing of the distributions—and from a $300,000 payment she received from the Japanese government in 2012 relating to her brother’s death. At the time of trial Fredrickson still had approximately $200,000 of the Japanese government funds, and she planned to put the money toward a nonprofit she hoped to start "to help organizations in Japan in [her brother’s] memory."
In 2012 Fredrickson also began thinking about returning to school to study nursing. She did not feel that bartending or truck driving was something she had a passion for, because her brother’s death caused her to realize that she wanted to do something to make a difference. It was also difficult for her to find childcare for her son because of her hours while working in bartending and truck driving.
Since the parties’ separation Button has received income from rentals, a consulting business, employment, a time share, and the sale of a duplex; he also has received income as well as large losses from stock trading. Button’s income varied greatly from year to year between 2006 and 2013.1
Button filed a complaint for custody in January 2013. The parties participated in a settlement conference in June. Button was represented by counsel during that conference but Fredrickson was not. During the conference the parties entered into an agreement resolving all custody issues. The final agreement specified that the parties would exercise joint legal custody and shared physical custody of their son, and the parties agreed to a week-on/week-off schedule. The parties also agreed to bear their own attorney’s fees and costs. The court approved the settlement in November 2013.
However, Button also raised issues related to prospective and retrospective child support at the settlement conference. The parties reserved those issues for later resolution by the court. Superior Court Judge Erin B. Marston conducted a trial on the child support issues in June 2014. The court applied the guidelines set forth in Civil Rule 90.3 to determine child support obligations.
The court ultimately found that Fredrickson was the obligor parent from September 2006 through August 2010 and calculated her child support obligation based on Rule 90.3. The court then applied the shared custody child support rules in Rule 90.3, using the parties’ actual income to calculate their respective child support obligations from September 2010 until 2013 (when the parties shared custody on a week-on/weekoff schedule). The court included the $300,000 payment from the Japanese government as a part of Fredrickson’s income for purposes of its child support calculations. Because of perceived difficulties tracking the exact amount and timing of the compensation payment, the court split the $300,000 payment into three annual installments. Therefore, for 2011, 2012, and 2013, the court determined that Fredrickson’s income consisted of the income she reported on her taxes plus $100,000 per year for each annual installment.
The court concluded that Fredrickson owed Button approximately $76,231 in child support from September 2006 through the end of 2013. It deducted around $14,027 from this sum as a credit for the amount Fredrickson had paid toward their son’s expenses between 2006 and 2013, and it also offset the total amount by the four months in 2010 for which Button owed Fredrickson child support. This left Fredrickson owing Button around $61,233 in past child support for September 2006 through 2013. Fredrickson moved for reconsideration, and Button supported Fredrickson’s motion and raised additional points for reconsideration. Upon reconsideration, the court corrected several errors in its calculations, reducing the total amount Fredrickson owed Button to approximately $56,861.
With regard to future child support obligations, the court found that from 2014 onward Fredrickson had been voluntarily unemployed. Based on this finding the court imputed income to Fredrickson in the amount of approximately $57,395, an average of Fredrickson’s adjusted gross income from her tax returns for 2006 through 2010. The court did not impute income to Button. Based on Button’s 2014 income, the court concluded that he owed Fredrickson approximately $431 per month from January 2014 onwards.
After the court issued its child support orders, Button filed a motion for Alaska Civil Rule 82 attorney’s fees. Thereafter the court entered an amended final judgment awarding Button approximately $56,360, consisting of approximately (1) $48,963 for child support from prior years less Button’s monthly obligation to Fredrickson beginning in January 2014 and (2) $7,396 in attorney’s fees. Fredrickson appeals on multiple grounds.
Whether the superior court used the correct method of calculating child support2 and whether it applied the correct legal standard in...
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...2001)). [7] Fredrickson v. Button, 426 P.3d 1047, 1052 (Alaska 2018) (quoting Robinson v. Robinson, 961 P.2d 1000, 1002 (Alaska 1998)). [8] Id. [9] Alaska R. Civ. P. [10] Alaska R. Civ. P. 90.3 cmt. III.A (quoting Alaska R. Civ. P. 90.3(a)(1)). [11] Id. (emphasis added). [12] Alaska R. Civ.......