Hoefler v. Hoefler
| Decision Date | 05 April 2001 |
| Docket Number | 98-00966 |
| Parties | SUSAN S. HOEFLER v. PAUL J. HOEFLERIN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE |
| Court | Tennessee Court of Appeals |
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Davidson County, No. 91D-3484
This appeal involves a dispute over a provision in a marital dissolution agreement in which the parties agreed to enroll their children in parochial school. The non-custodial parent declined to pay for the parties' younger child's private school expenses after the custodial parent unilaterally withdrew the child from parochial school and enrolled him in another private school. When the non-custodial parent filed a petition in the Circuit Court for Davidson County to terminate his child support because his younger child had reached the age of majority, the custodial parent insisted that he should reimburse her for nearly $23,800 in expenses she had incurred to send the child to private school. The trial court, relying on the terms of the marital dissolution agreement, declined to order the non-custodial parent to reimburse the custodial parent for these expenses. On this appeal, the custodial parent asserts that the non-custodial parent waived his opportunity to object to her choice of schools for the parties' son and should be estopped to deny his responsibility for these educational expenses. She also requests this court to grant a retroactive upward deviation from the child support the non-custodial spouse had been paying. We affirm the trial court.
William C. Koch, Jr., J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which Ben H. Cantrell, P.J., M.S., and Patricia J. Cottrell, J., joined.
Abby R. Rubenfeld, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Susan S. Hoefler.
Clark Lee Shaw, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Paul J. Hoefler.
OPINIONPaul Hoefler, Jr. and Susan Sherman Hoefler married in 1972. They had two children together, a daughter born in May 1977 and a son born in March 1980. When the parties divorced in January 1992, the final divorce decree incorporated a marital dissolution agreement. Based on their marital dissolution agreement, Ms. Hoefler received sole custody of the parties' two children, and Mr. Hoefler agreed to pay child support. The child support provision in the marital dissolution agreement specifically recited that Mr. Hoefler was then employed as a salesperson by J. C. Penney Co. and that he was earning $16,266 per year. Accordingly, based on the child support guidelines, Mr. Hoefler agreed to pay Ms. Hoefler $90 per week in child support.
The Hoeflers were both Roman Catholics and placed great importance in their children attending parochial schools. Accordingly, their children were enrolled in parochial schools when their parents divorced. For the purpose of avoiding interruption with this education, the marital dissolution agreement provided as follows:
The parties are firmly committed to having their children educated in parochial schools. To that end, HUSBAND agrees that he will be responsible for tuition, books and fees for Paul James Hoefler, III for his elementary, high school, and college education. WIFE agrees that she will be responsible for the tuition, fees and books for Suzanne Irvine Hoefler throughout high school and college. In the event either party's income shall increase disproportional to the income of the other party, the parties agree that they will modify the tuition requirements set forth herein by mutual agreement.
When the parties divorced, their son was in the seventh grade at St. Bernard Academy, a private school in Nashville operated by the Roman Catholic Church. He was having difficulty with mathematics and was falling behind in his other school work. The Hoeflers were addressing the problem by sending their son to a tutor.
Sometime after the entry of the divorce decree, the parties' son was found to be learning disabled. During the summer of 1992, Ms. Hoefler enrolled the boy in a summer remedial program at Benton Hall School, a private school in Williamson County specializing in educating children with learning disabilities. By the end of the summer program, the improvements in the boy's mathematics skills and self-esteem were so evident that Ms. Hoefler decided he should attend Benton Hall School rather than St. Bernard Academy. Accordingly, she unilaterally withdrew him from St. Bernard Academy and, in the fall of 1992, enrolled him as a full-time student at Benton Hall School. The boy eventually graduated from Benton Hall School. Mr. Hoefler was, of course, aware that the parties' son had changed schools. He did not challenge Ms. Hoefler's decision to send their son to Benton Hall School.
Beginning in 1994, the parties began their long-running battle over child support. In June 1994, Ms. Hoefler successfully sought a wage assignment against Mr. Hoefler because his child support arrearage at that time exceeded $7,000.1 In July 1994, the trial court concluded that Mr. Hoefler's arrearage was $3,000 and directed that all his future child support payments should be paid through the trial court clerk.
In 1995, Mr. Hoefler requested the trial court to reduce his child support obligation because the parties' daughter was eighteen years old. His petition did not mention the expenses Ms. Hoefler was incurring by sending the parties' son to Benton Hall School. Ms. Hoefler opposed the petition by asserting (1) that Mr. Hoefler was delinquent with his weekly child support payments, (2) that Mr. Hoefler had failed to pay $5,675 to reimburse her for the expenses connected with sending the parties' son to Benton Hall School, and (3) that Mr. Hoefler had not paid one-half of the children's medical expenses.2
The parties returned to court in 1996 after Ms. Hoefler sought to have Mr. Hoefler held in criminal contempt for failing to pay his weekly child support. Ms. Hoefler's contempt petition mentioned nothing about Mr. Hoefler's non-payment of the Benton Hall School expenses or their child's medical expenses. In November 1996, the trial court determined that Mr. Hoefler's arrearage was $1,271.25, that he was guilty of criminal contempt for willfully failing to pay his monthly child support obligation, and that his future support payments would be made by wage assignment. In May 1997, the trial court determined that Mr. Hoefler had substantially complied with its November 1996 order, except for an unpaid medical insurance premium.
Finally, in May 1998, Mr. Hoefler filed a pro se motion seeking to terminate his child support obligation because the parties' son had turned eighteen and had completed high school. If this motion did anything, it brought to a head the parties' long-smoldering and unresolved disagreement over Mr. Hoefler's responsibility for approximately $23,800 in expenses Ms. Hoefler had incurred by enrolling their son in Benton Hall School. She complained that she had been forced to pay these expenses herself because Mr. Hoefler had refused to pay them. Mr. Hoefler responded that Ms. Hoefler had exercised her sole prerogative as custodial parent to enroll their son in Benton Hall School and that he was within his rights under the marital dissolution agreement to decline to pay the boy's tuition at a non-parochial school. After concluding that Benton Hall School was not a "parochial school," the trial court dismissed Ms. Hoefler's claim and determined that Mr. Hoefler had no further, legally-imposed obligation to support his children. Ms. Hoefler has appealed from this decision.
The pivotal issue in this case is whether Mr. Hoefler should be held legally responsible for the expenses related to his son's attendance at Benton Hall School. While Ms. Hoefler feints toward arguing that Benton Hall School is a "parochial school" for the purpose of the marital dissolution agreement, her principal claims are that Mr. Hoefler should be required to pay these expenses because, by his conduct, he waived his right to insist that his son attend parochial school and because he is estopped to claim that he is responsible only for the educational expenses at a parochial school.
Our first task is to determine the intended scope of the provision in the marital dissolution agreement conditioning Mr. Hoefler's obligation to pay for his son's private education on the boy's attending a "parochial school." Ms. Hoefler posits that the parties intended the term to be expansive enough to include any private school. This construction of the "parochial school" is inconsistent with the term's plain and common meaning.
A marital dissolution agreement is the product of negotiations between divorcing parties, usually through their lawyers, to compromise and settle some or all of their disputes arising out of the dissolution of their marriage. These agreements are encouraged because they enable the parties to avoid the expense, delay, and stress of litigation. 2 Homer H. Clark, Jr., The Law of Domestic Relations in the United States § 19.1, at 410 (2nd ed. 1987). Thus, in the absence of a showing of fraud, duress, or unfairness, the courts generally will accept these agreements and incorporate them into a final divorce decree.
Once a marital dissolution agreement has been incorporated into a divorce decree, it may be enforced just like any other judgment. However, should disputes arise later regarding the meaning of a provision in a marital dissolution agreement, the courts will invoke the familiar rules of contract construction to give the fullest possible effect of the intention of the parties as reflected in their marital dissolution agreement. Towner v. Towner, 858 S.W.2d 888, 890 (Tenn. 1993) (...
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