Higgins v. Wood, Docket: Pen–17–170
| Decision Date | 03 July 2018 |
| Docket Number | Docket: Pen–17–170 |
| Citation | 189 A.3d 724 |
| Parties | Shelly R. HIGGINS v. Todd A. WOOD |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
Ezra A. R. Willey, Esq. (orally), Willey Law Offices, Bangor, for appellant Todd A. Wood
Wayne Doane, Esq., Exeter, for appellee Shelly R. Higgins
Janet T. Mills, Attorney General, Thomas A. Knowlton, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), and Debby Willis, Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee Department of Health and Human Services
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.
[¶ 1] In this appeal, and a separate opinion issued today, see Dep't of Health & Human Servs. v. Fagone , 2018 ME 89, ––– A.3d ––––, we clarify the circumstances in which a court order that anticipates a change in child support upon the occurrence of future events will be self-effectuating. In the matter before us, we conclude that the court's order requiring Todd A. Wood to pay a specific amount of child support to Shelly R. Higgins did not contain a self-effectuating provision that immediately reduced Wood's child support payments upon his oldest child reaching age eighteen. We also conclude that neither administrative collateral estoppel nor administrative equitable estoppel was properly raised and therefore those doctrines cannot provide a remedy to Wood. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment on Wood's post-divorce motions in which the District Court (Bangor, Lucy, J. ) ordered changes in Wood's child support effective only after Wood's service of the post-divorce motion to modify.
[¶ 2] The following facts are drawn from the procedural record and from the family law magistrate's (Chandler, M. ) findings of fact, reached upon a stipulated documentary record and adopted by the District Court (Lucy, J. ). See Dunwoody v. Dunwoody , 2017 ME 21, ¶ 7, 155 A.3d 422. Higgins and Wood were married in May 1997 and have three children who were born in 1991, 1998, and 2001.
[¶ 3] Higgins filed a complaint for divorce on March 20, 2007, and a family law magistrate (Langner, M. ) entered a divorce judgment on June 14, 2007, that provided for Higgins to have primary residence and required Wood to pay child support of $297.15 per week for the three children, who were then ages fifteen, nine, and five. The child support worksheet attached to the judgment provided as follows with respect to the overall weekly support obligation of the parents:
The court added in the $35 cost of health insurance for the three children without apportioning it per child. The order made Wood responsible for ninety-one percent of the weekly support and credited him for paying the cost of health insurance, resulting in the $297 weekly support amount that was required by the judgment for support of the three children. The child support order stated:
The child support obligation shall continue for each child until that child reaches the age of 18; provided, however, that if the child has not graduated, withdrawn, or been expelled from secondary school as defined in Title 20–A, the child support shall continue until the child graduates or reaches the age of 19, whichever occurs first[.]
[¶ 4] In addition, the order stated,
[¶ 5] To assure that Wood met his child support obligations, Higgins pursued support enforcement through the Department of Health and Human Services Division of Support Enforcement and Recovery, which withheld Wood's wages to provide Higgins with the ordered child support beginning in the middle of 2008. In 2009, the oldest child turned eighteen, having already graduated from high school. At about that time, Wood asked the Department to reduce his payments, though he did not move to modify the judgment in the District Court.1 The Department made no adjustment at that time.
[¶ 6] Wood continued to pay child support in the amount ordered and took no further action until February 2015 when his telephone calls to the Department prompted the Regional Manager of the Department's Division of Support Enforcement and Recovery to send him a notice that the Department was adjusting the child support obligation down to $182 per week. The $182 amount was apparently intended to reflect a flat reduction of the basic weekly support by the $126 amount originally allocated to the oldest child in the 2007 child support worksheet, with the health insurance provisions remaining the same despite the termination of support for one child, and the support amounts for the other two children remaining unchanged despite the increases that should have occurred when each of the younger children reached age twelve. At the time of the February 2015 letter, the two younger children were ages seventeen and thirteen.
[¶ 7] Several months later, in July 2015, the Director of the Division informed Wood that the February decision was in error and that Wood needed to file, in court, a motion to modify the child support order to seek any reduction in the ordered support.
[¶ 8] On July 24, 2015, Wood filed two motions in the District Court—a motion to modify and a motion for determination of overpayment. He argued that he had overpaid by more than $35,000 over the course of six years because, after the oldest child turned eighteen, his child support obligation should have been reduced by $114 per week. Although the use of the summary judgment process in family law matters is not authorized, see M.R. Civ. P. 56(a),2 Wood also moved for summary judgment on his post-judgment motions, submitting a statement of material facts and supporting evidence. In the motion for summary judgment, he raised issues of administrative collateral estoppel and equitable estoppel. The parties filed opposing and reply memoranda and statements of material facts.
[¶ 9] On March 21, 2016, the family law magistrate (Chandler, M. ) held a hearing.3 The parties informed the magistrate that they had agreed to a series of three child support orders to apply from the filing of Wood's motion, in July 2015, forward. The first of these orders imposed an obligation of $280.50 per week toward the support of the two youngest children through January 2016 when the middle child turned eighteen. The order explicitly provided that the support would decrease to $207.56 upon the youngest child becoming the only child for whom support was owed, and the final order required Wood to pay $187 per week beginning in August 2016 based on the Department's revised child support table. See 17 C.M.R. 10 144 351–15 to –23 (2016).
[¶ 10] The magistrate then accepted a collection of stipulated exhibits, and the parties offered legal arguments regarding the amount of child support owed from the oldest child's eighteenth birthday in 2009 through the July 31, 2015, effective date of the first agreed-upon order. Thus, the court held the trial on a stipulated record, and the parties presented argument on the applicable law. See Rose v. Parsons , 2015 ME 73, ¶ 8, 118 A.3d 220.
[¶ 11] The magistrate entered the modified child support orders to which the parties had agreed. The magistrate then concluded that Wood could not recover any overpayment for child support paid prior to his service of the motion to modify because the parties' 2007 judgment did not provide dollar amounts by which the child support order would self-adjust upon each child's emancipation or attainment of the age of twelve. The court ordered the Department to determine any amount of overpayment or underpayment that may have arisen while the motion to modify was under consideration by the court.
[¶ 12] The Department filed an unopposed motion to amend the findings of fact to correct minor factual errors, which the magistrate granted. Wood objected to the magistrate's order on the grounds that the magistrate applied the incorrect law and that only a judge—not a magistrate—had the authority to rule on the motion for summary judgment. See M.R. Civ. P. 118(a).
[¶ 13] The court (Lucy, J. ) reviewed the magistrate's decision and entered a judgment in which it adopted the magistrate's order on the modification of child support, agreed with the magistrate that the Department did not have the authority to adjust the court-ordered amount of child support, and concluded that summary judgment must be denied, in part because a party may not move for summary judgment on a post-judgment motion in a family matter. See id. With respect to the alleged overpayment, the court explained that, because the divorce judgment did not include explicit prospective calculations of child support based on the children reaching age twelve or eighteen, a motion to modify the judgment was necessary for the court to find the proper amount of child support to be paid.
[¶ 14] Wood appealed from the judgment. See 14 M.R.S. § 1901(1) (2017) ; 19–A M.R.S. § 104 (2017) ; M.R. App. P. 2 (Tower 2016).4 The Department filed a brief that included a "supplement" consisting of the child support worksheet and order from Lund v. Lund , a District Court case that resulted in an opinion from us. 2007 ME 98, 927 A.2d 1185. Wood objected and moved to strike the supplement because it was not in the record available to the trial court.5 We ordered that the issue would be considered along with the merits of the appeal, and we now take judicial notice of the documents submitted by the Department and address the merits of Wood's...
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