Howland v. Howland
| Citation | 900 A.2d 922 |
| Parties | Donna F. HOWLAND, Appellee v. Robert H. HOWLAND, Appellant. |
| Decision Date | 25 May 2006 |
| Court | Pennsylvania Superior Court |
James Lieber, Pittsburgh, for appellant.
Dawn Gull, Pittsburgh, for appellee.
¶ 1 Father, Robert H. Howland, appeals from the May 24, 2005 Order, as clarified by the June 1, 2005 Order, modifying his support obligations and ordering him to pay 77% of the expenses relating to the placement of his two children in out-of-state residential care facilities. After careful review, we vacate the Order and remand for proceedings consistent with this Opinion.
D.H. ("the Mother") and R.H. ("the Father") are the parents of four young men currently 18, 15, 14 and 10 years old. The family initially lived in Mt. Lebanon. In May of 1999, the Father moved out of the family home. The Mother and the four boys, then aged 12, 9, 7, and 3, remained in the home until August of 2000, when they moved to Murrysville. The Father consistently provided excellent financial support for the family, both before and after separation, from his employment as a psychologist.1
For nearly two years after the Mother and Father separated, the boys stayed with and spent most of their time with Mother while Father saw them occasionally. Then, in March of 2001, the Father withdrew from visiting or communicating with the boys. The Father did this because he believed that poor relations between himself and the Mother was harming the children. In September of 2003, the Mother and father were divorced, and the Father remarried another woman in December of 2003.
The oldest boy, Ben, was a special needs child. At the age of six, he was diagnosed with Tourette's Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It was very difficult to find an appropriate school or treatment facility for Ben. Although suffering from these serious mental disorders, Ben was at the same time highly intelligent. Mt. Lebanon's public schools did not have a special education program that fit Ben's needs, and he was therefore put in the Baldwin Whitehall school districts special education program. This did not work either, and Ben returned to Mt. Lebanon in sixth grade with the school district providing an aid to accompany Ben at all times.
After the Mother and the boys moved to Murrysville, Ben began getting into trouble. In eighth grade at Franklin Regional public schools, Ben received detentions, suspensions, was arrested for "mooning" a school bus and, at the request of school administrators, withdrew from the school at the end of the year. Ben enrolled in two different private schools, the University School and Kiski Prep, but he was dismissed from both. Ben was hospitalized after attempting suicide, and a few months after his release had a second brush with the juvenile court system. Ben consistently got C and D grades in school, but also consistently scored high on achievement tests.
Because of the involuntary verbal and motor tics associated with Tourette's Disorder, Ben was relentlessly teased and tormented by his peers in each school. During Ben's junior year in high school, which started in the Franklin Regional public schools, things became even more volatile. Other students began picking on him, pushing him and calling him names. He was suspended on at least three occasions for, among other things, fighting. He was nearly arrested again for breaking into a car and stealing alcohol. In early April of that year, another student wrote "fag" on Ben's sunglasses. Ben responded with an email threatening serious bodily injury, for which he was charged in juvenile court with terroristic threats and expelled from school. Within about a week, while driving his Mother's car with her in it, Ben ran four stop signs, struck his mother and then intentionally drove into the woods in an effort to kill both of them.
With Ben's Father out of the picture for over three years, the Mother was dealing with this crisis on her own. She immediately called Amy Kelly, M.D., the psychiatrist who had been treating Ben for the last year and a half. Dr. Kelly recommended that Ben be immediately placed in what is known as a residential treatment facility. The Mother gathered information on various residential treatment facilities, and after consulting with Dr. Kelly, enrolled Ben in Discovery Academy in Provo, Utah. Ben could not be told of this in advance since he would have refused to go, and the Mother hired two professional escorts from Discovery Academy. They took Ben to Utah on April 23, 2004.
During the same period of time, Mother had to deal with another crisis involving Tim, the second oldest child. During the end of the previous school year in the Franklin Regional school district, Tim was charged in juvenile court with risking a catastrophe for lighting a high flame on a cigarette lighter on his school bus. Over the summer, Tim snuck out of the home after midnight and paint-balled houses in the neighborhood. After starting eighth grade in September, the Mother was warned by his school principal and the school police that Tim was part of a gang. Specifically, because Tim was physically intimidating at six feet tall and 185 pounds, he was the gang's enforcer. In October, Tim was charged in juvenile court with vandalism for writing on signs. On April 25, 2004 (two days after Ben was taken to Discovery Academy), Tim was arrested for bringing an eight inch knife to school. Tim spent the next two weeks in a juvenile detention facility. With the advice of an attorney she hired to represent Tim, the Mother enrolled Tim in Ivy Ridge boarding school in Ogdensburg, New York. Juvenile court placed Tim on probation for 18 months, subject to him being placed in Ivy Ridge.
While Tim remained in Ivy Ridge throughout the Spring and Summer without incident, Ben had difficulty with Discovery Academy. Within two weeks of Ben's placement at Discovery Academy, the school informed the Mother it was recommending Ben be transferred to a wilderness treatment program, Walk-About, in Lehi, Utah. In the Walk-About wilderness treatment program, Ben finally found a program where he thrived. Just before he completed the wilderness program in eight weeks, Ben's therapist at the program recommended against sending Ben home or to Discovery Academy again. Since the therapist did not know of any program that could address Ben's unique needs, he recommended the Mother hire an educational consultant. The mother hired Nancy Green of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, who recommended that Ben attended Rancho Valmora in Valmora, New Mexico. On June 30, 2004, Ben began attending Rancho Valmora, and although at first angry, he eventually flourished in the program. The Mother reported in December, 2004 that Ben asked if the could remain there and graduate from Rancho Valmora High School, and that he had applied and hoped to attend college at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2005.
Trial Court Opinion, Hertzberg, J., 8/9/05, at 1-4.
¶ 2 On May 17, 2004, mother filed a petition for modification of child support, requesting father pay his proportionate share of the expenses relating to placement of the parties' children in out-of-state residential treatment facilities. Following a four-day hearing, the hearing officer issued a recommendation on January 4, 2005, to which both parties filed exceptions soon thereafter. On May 24, 2005, the court dismissed father's exceptions, sustained mother's cross-exceptions, and ordered father to pay 77% of the expenses. The May 24, 2005 Order was clarified on June 1, 2005. Thereafter, on June 3, 2005, father filed a motion for reconsideration, which was denied by the court on June 22, 2005. This timely appeal followed.
¶ 3 Father raises five issues for our review:
A. Did the trial court abuse its discretion under the circumstances by requiring Father to contribute extraordinary health care and educational expenses for placements of the parties' children where the parties had shared legal custody and Mother unilaterally made the decisions for those placements without Father's consent and without prior Court approval?
B. Did the trial court abuse its discretion by requiring Father to contribute to extraordinary expenses for placement of the parties' child in residential treatment facilities in Utah and New Mexico under the circumstances where insurance coverage was available for such facilities in Pennsylvania?
C. Did the trial court abuse its discretion by requiring Father to contribute to extraordinary expenses for placement of the parties' child in residential treatment facilities in Utah and New Mexico where such expenses were otherwise unreasonable, unnecessary, and/or excessive under the circumstances?
D. Did the trial court abuse its discretion under the circumstances by requiring Father to contribute to private boarding school expenses for the parties' child?
E. Did the trial court abuse its discretion in the determination of Mother's income and/or earning capacity under the circumstances?
Appellant's brief at 7. For the purposes of our review, we have chosen to address father's claims in a slightly different order than presented in his brief.
¶ 4 The standard of review in determining whether a trial court erred in fashioning a support Order is well-settled.
When evaluating a support order, this Court may only reverse the trial court's determination where the order cannot be sustained on any valid ground. We will not interfere with the broad discretion afforded the trial court absent an abuse of the discretion or insufficient evidence to sustain the support order. An abuse of discretion is not merely an error of judgment; if, in reaching a conclusion, the court overrides or misapplies the law, or the judgment exercised is shown by the record to be either manifestly unreasonable or the product...
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...cases is abuse of discretion, and a trial court's order will stand absent a finding of abuse of discretion. See Howland v. Howland, 900 A.2d 922 at 927 (Pa. Super. 2006). "[T]he duty to support one's child is absolute, and the purpose of child support is to promote the child's best interest......