Jefferson County Child Support Enforcement Unit v. Hollands
Annotate this Case
JEFFERSON COUNTY CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT
UNIT v. Vollie HOLLANDS, II
96-474 ___ S.W.2d ___
Supreme Court of Arkansas
Opinion delivered March 3, 1997
1. Parent & child -- reciprocity limitation imposed by chancellor
incorrect -- chancellor erred in basing decision to deny
appellant's motion on Michigan's failure to adopt UIFSA. --
Michigan's failure to enact the Uniform Interstate Family
Support Act (UIFSA) did not permit the chancellor to decline
to enforce a Michigan decree that was filed pursuant to the
Arkansas UIFSA where nothing in the language of Arkansas's
statute imposed a reciprocity limitation; the General Assembly
did not intend to make the UIFSA procedures available only to
those states that have adopted UIFSA; reciprocity of laws
between states is no longer required because at present all
states have quite similar laws, and the enacting state should
enforce a support obligation irrespective of another state's
law; it was error for the Chancellor to base his decision to
deny appellant Jefferson County Child Support Enforcement
Unit's motion on the failure of the State of Michigan to adopt
UIFSA.
2. Parent & child -- Arkansas court does not nullify sister
court's support decree in RURESA proceeding unless order
specifically provides for nullification. -- An Arkansas court
does not nullify or supersede a sister court's support decree
in a Revised Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Act
(RURESA) proceeding unless it specifically provides for
nullification; absent express words of nullification, an order
filed by an Arkansas court that imposes a child-support
obligation different from the obligation originally imposed by
the sister state does not change or modify the sister state's
decree.
3. Parent & child -- Arkansas court may impose lesser payment
from obligor spouse -- sister state's decree remains extant
without express words of nullification. -- Although an
Arkansas court is free to require a lesser payment from the
obligor spouse, the obligor spouse remains obliged for the
difference between the original award and the modified award,
unless the order reducing the support obligation expressly
nullifies the sister state's decree; if there are no express
words of nullification, the sister state's decree remains
extant, and arrearages accrue under the original support
obligation even as the obligor satisfies the locally ordered
support obligation.
4. Parent & child -- responding court may vary amount of support
obligation in underlying order -- without specific provision
arrearages continue to accumulate under original order. --
Although the "responding court" in a RURESA action may enter
its own support order prospectively raising or lowering the
amount of the support obligation if the circumstances before
it warrant such a change, a variation between the support
amount provided in the RURESA order and that in the underlying
support order does not in itself alter or modify the
underlying support order; if the RURESA order of the
"responding court" does not specifically provide that it is
modifying or nullifying the underlying support order, the
RURESA support order does not nullify or supersede the
original support order, and arrearages will continue to
accumulate under that order.
5. Parent & child -- orders of chancellor did not contain express
words of nullification -- chancellor erred in refusing
appellant's request to determine arrearage owed based on
Michigan court's decree. -- Where the orders of the chancellor
did not contain express words of nullification, the chancellor
failed to effect a "nullification" of the Michigan order and
erred in refusing the appellant's request to determine the
arrearage owed to the spouse based on the Michigan court's
decree awarding $87 per week in child support; because the
chancellor erroneously evaluated the effect of his previous
RURESA order on the original Michigan decree, the case was
reversed and remanded.
Appeal from Jefferson Chancery Court; Eugene Harris,
Chancellor; reversed and remanded.
Catherine J. Waddell and Eugene Hunt, for appellant.
No response.
David Newbern, Justice.
On September 22, 1995, appellant Jefferson County Child
Support Enforcement Unit ("JCCSEU") filed a motion in the Jefferson
Chancery Court that, in essence, sought to register a 1982 Michigan
child-support order for enforcement in Arkansas under the Uniform
Interstate Family Support Act ("UIFSA"). The motion stated that,
under the Michigan decree, appellee Vollie Hollands, II, owed to
his former wife Constance Hollands an accumulated child-support
arrearage of $39,642.50. The Chancellor denied the JCCSEU's motion
to fix the arrearage at this level and stated he was not obligated
to enforce a Michigan support decree filed under UIFSA because
Michigan had not enacted that statute. The Chancellor further
indicated that one of his previous orders, entered under the
Revised Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Act ("RURESA"),
had modified Mr. Hollands' support obligation under the original
Michigan decree and that, in light of Mr. Hollands's payments
pursuant to the Chancellor's RURESA order, the remaining arrearage
was fixed at $15,298. As we find both of the Chancellor's
conclusions to be erroneous, we reverse and remand the case for
further proceedings consistent with our opinion and the procedures
described in UIFSA. Ark. Code Ann. 9-17-101 to 9-17-905 (Repl.
1993).
On December 29, 1982, Ms. Hollands was awarded a judgment of
divorce against Mr. Hollands by the Circuit Court of Kalamazoo
County, Michigan. The Michigan court awarded custody of the
parties' son, Vollie Hollands, III, to Ms. Hollands and ordered Mr.
Hollands to pay child support in the amount of $87 per week.
Ms. Hollands returned to the Michigan court in April 1988 and
filed a petition under RURESA to enforce the child-support award
against Mr. Hollands in Jefferson County. Ms. Hollands alleged
that Mr. Hollands had ceased making support payments in March 1987,
and she petitioned the Michigan court to forward the relevant
papers to the Jefferson Chancery Court so that it could order Mr.
Hollands to pay his weekly support obligation of $87 and to pay $50
per week on the accrued arrearage of $18,481, or, alternatively, to
pay "any such sum" as the Chancery Court determined "to be fair and
reasonable." On April 20, 1988, the Michigan court filed a
"certificate and order" finding that Mr. Hollands owed a duty of
support to his son and requesting the Chancery Court to "enter an
order for support directed to [Mr. Hollands] as such Court shall
determine to be fair and reasonable ...." The Michigan court
forwarded to the Jefferson Chancery Court copies of Ms. Hollands's
RURESA petition, the divorce decree, the certificate and order, and
the Michigan RURESA. These documents were filed in the Chancery
Court on October 27, 1988, in accordance with the Arkansas RURESA.
On November 4, 1988, the Chancery Court entered an order
acknowledging that $18,481 was the amount owed by Mr. Hollands for
the arrearage that had accrued under the Michigan court's decree
prior to the filing of that decree in the Chancery Court under
RURESA. In the same order, however, the Chancery Court
prospectively reduced Mr. Hollands's child-support payment from $87
per week to $25 per week and ordered Mr. Hollands to pay $5 per
week on the $18,481 arrearage. The Chancery Court continued to
order lesser amounts in subsequent orders, and it based its
determination of the arrearage that accrued after the Michigan
decree was filed in the Chancery Court on the various lesser
support awards instead of the Michigan court's original award of
$87 per week. In an order entered on July 10, 1992, the Chancery
Court stated that the amount of the arrearage had increased to
$20,091, and it ordered Mr. Hollands to pay a weekly child-support
payment of $107.50 and to pay the same amount toward the accrued
arrearage.
On February 21, 1995, the Family Support Division of the
Kalamazoo County Prosecutor's Office in Michigan filed a petition
with the JCCSEU requesting it to register the 1982 Michigan support
decree in the Chancery Court for enforcement under UIFSA. Act 468
of 1993 had repealed RURESA, which last appeared at Ark. Code Ann.
9-14-301 to 9-14-344 (Repl. 1991), and adopted UIFSA in its
place. See Ark. Code Ann. 9-17-101 to 9-17-905 (Repl. 1993).
The UIFSA petition filed by the Michigan authorities with the
JCCSEU stated that Ms. Hollands had received her last support
payment on December 20, 1994, and that the amount of arrearage owed
by Mr. Hollands for the period from July 9, 1982, to February 3,
1995, was $39,642.50. This amount was based upon the Michigan
court's original support award of $87 per week.
As we mentioned above, the JCCSEU then filed on September 22,
1995, a motion in the Chancery Court seeking to enforce the
Michigan decree under UIFSA. Although we are puzzled by the style
of the motion--i.e., a "motion to convert URESA action to UIFSA
action"--it is clear to us that the motion simply sought to
register the 1982 Michigan decree for enforcement under UIFSA and
to request the Chancellor to calculate the arrearage owed by Mr.
Hollands with reference to the Michigan court's award of $87 per
week rather than the Chancery Court's modified support awards. The
JCCSEU attached to its motion the UIFSA petition and accompanying
exhibits filed by the Michigan authorities. Mr. Hollands filed a
response to the JCCSEU's motion and simply denied the allegations
and requested that the motion be dismissed.
The Chancery Court denied the JCCSEU's motion at the
conclusion of a hearing held on December 5, 1995. As we indicated,
there are two apparent bases for the Chancellor's ruling. First,
the Chancellor stated that he was not obligated to enforce the
Michigan support order under UIFSA because Michigan had not yet
enacted that statute.
Second, the Chancellor stated that he was authorized to
"modify" the Michigan court's original support award; that his
order of July 10, 1992, effectively modified the Michigan decree;
and that the remaining arrearage due to Ms. Hollands had to be
calculated with reference to that order. According to the
Chancellor, the language in Ms. Hollands's 1988 RURESA petition and
the Michigan court's certificate and order requesting him to award
a "fair and reasonable" amount of child support permitted him to
modify the Michigan court's original award of $87 per week. The
Chancellor maintained that he did just that with his order on July
10, 1992, which apparently was the last order modifying Mr.
Hollands's support obligation and which established the arrearage
due to Ms. Hollands at $20,091. The Chancellor indicated that Mr.
Hollands had made payments pursuant to this order and thereby had
reduced the arrearage to $15,298. The Chancellor accepted this sum
as the remaining arrearage due to Ms. Hollands, and he declined to
refigure the amount using the Michigan court's award because he
knew of no authority "by which we could go back and set aside an
order that's been on the books seven years." The Chancellor
ordered Mr. Hollands to continue making child-support payments in
accordance with the July 1992 order.
1. Reciprocity under UIFSA
We first address the suggestion made by the Chancellor that a
state that has enacted UIFSA may decline to enforce a sister
state's support decree filed under UIFSA if the sister state has
not adopted that statute. We do not agree that Michigan's failure
to enact UIFSA permitted the Chancellor to decline to enforce the
Michigan decree that was filed pursuant to the Arkansas UIFSA. We
find nothing in the language of our statute that imposes a
reciprocity limitation, and we therefore conclude that the General
Assembly did not intend to make the UIFSA procedures available only
to those states that have adopted UIFSA.
Our conclusion is supported by the following statutory
commentary:
3. RECIPROCITY NOT REQUIRED.
Reciprocity of laws between states is no longer required
because at present all states have quite similar laws,
and the enacting state should enforce a support
obligation irrespective of another state's law.
Nonetheless, consistent with past practice, URESA, RURESA
and all substantially similar state laws are deemed
equivalent to UIFSA ... for purposes of interstate
actions .... This means that any of these acts can be
used if different states have different versions in
effect, which should help ease the transition to the new
Act ....
Commentaries on Ark. Code Ann. 9-17-101 et seq., Vol. B, at p.
327 (Repl. 1995). Thus, it was error for the Chancellor to base
his decision to deny the JCCSEU's motion on the failure of the
State of Michigan to adopt UIFSA.
2. Modification of original support decree under RURESA
The other reason given by the Chancellor for denying the
JCCSEU's motion was that one of the orders he had entered pursuant
to RURESA seven years previously had "modified" the Michigan
court's support decree and could not be "set aside." Therefore,
according to the Chancellor, the prior order he had entered under
RURESA controlled the calculation of the child-support arrearages
owing to Ms. Hollands.
As noted above, the General Assembly repealed RURESA when it
enacted UIFSA, and the motion brought by the JCCSEU on behalf of
the State of Michigan was brought under UIFSA rather than RURESA.
Nonetheless, we must apply RURESA and the case law interpreting it
in order to ascertain the effect, if any, of the Chancellor's
previous RURESA order upon the original Michigan support decree.
Office of Child Support Enforcement v. Troxel, 326 Ark. 524, 526,
931 S.W.2d 784, 785 (1996). The Chancellor's RURESA order entered
in July 1992 did not nullify the Michigan decree; thus the
Chancellor erred in refusing to calculate the amount of arrearages
owed by Mr. Hollands with reference to the Michigan court's award
of $87 per week in child support.
As we observed in the Troxel case, the effect of an Arkansas
court's RURESA order upon a sister state's support decree must be
determined in light of RURESA's "anti-supersession clause," which
provides in part as follows:
A support order made by a court of this state pursuant to
this subchapter does not nullify ... a support order made
by a court of any other state pursuant to a substantially
similar act or any other law, regardless of priority of
issuance, unless otherwise specifically provided by the
court. Amounts paid for a particular period pursuant to
any support order made by the court of another state
shall be credited against the amounts accruing or accrued
for the same period under any support order made by the
court of this state.
Ark. Code Ann. 9-14-331 (Repl. 1991)(repealed 1993).
In the Troxel case, we cited Tanbal v. Hall, 317 Ark. 506, 878 S.W.2d 724 (1994), and Britton v. Floyd, 293 Ark. 397, 738 S.W.2d 408 (1987), for the proposition that an Arkansas court does not
nullify or supersede a sister court's support decree in a RURESA
proceeding unless it specifically provides for nullification.
Absent express words of nullification, we said, an order filed by
an Arkansas court that imposes a child-support obligation different
from the obligation originally imposed by the sister state does not
change or modify the sister state's decree.
Although an Arkansas court is free to require a lesser payment
from the obligor spouse, the obligor spouse remains obliged for the
difference between the original award and the modified award unless
the order reducing the support obligation expressly nullifies the
sister state's decree. If there are no express words of
nullification, the sister state's decree remains extant, and
arrearages accrue under the original support obligation even as the
obligor satisfies the locally ordered support obligation. The
obligor, of course, is entitled to credit for any payments he or
she makes under the orders of the Arkansas court reducing the
child-support obligation.
In the Troxel, Tanbal, and Britton cases, this Court reviewed
the Arkansas courts' orders and found no express words of
nullification. We therefore concluded that the sister state's
decree remained in effect and that the obligee spouse was entitled
to an arrearage as calculated under the original decree. Likewise,
in the case at bar, the orders of the Chancellor do not contain
express words of nullification. Therefore, we must conclude that
the Chancellor failed to effect a "nullification" of the Michigan
order and that the Chancellor erred in refusing the JCCSEU's
request to determine the arrearage owed to Ms. Hollands based on
the Michigan court's decree awarding $87 per week in child support.
We agree with the courts of other jurisdictions that the
"responding court" in a RURESA action, such as the Jefferson
Chancery Court in this case, "may enter its own support order
prospectively raising or lowering the amount of the support
obligation, if the circumstances before it warrant such a change."
White-Nathan v. Nathan, 888 P.2d 237, 240 (Ariz.App. Div. 1 1994).
However, "a variation between the support amount provided in the
RURESA order and that in the underlying support order does not in
itself alter or modify the underlying support order." Id. If the
RURESA order of the "responding court" does not specifically
provide that it is modifying or nullifying the underlying support
order, "the RURESA support order does not nullify or supersede the
original support order, and arrearages will continue to accumulate
under that order." Id. at 241. See also Kranz v. Kranz, 525 N.W.2d 777, 781 (Wis.App. 1994)(stating that it "is sensible to
require a responding court to enforce only the level of support it
determines is reasonable under its laws," but maintaining that the
responding court's "determination does not affect the
enforceability of the support ordered in the initiating court's
prior judgment"); Wade v. Wade, 552 So. 2d 1279, 1281 (La.App. 5
Cir. 1989)("The trial court is correct in its finding that the
defendant is entitled to credit for amounts paid pursuant to the
Alabama URESA order, but is still in arrears for the difference
between that amount and the amount due on the Louisiana order,
since no modification by the Alabama court supersedes the Louisiana
judgment."). See Annotation, 31 A.L.R. 4th 347 (1984).
Because the Chancellor erroneously evaluated the effect of his
previous RURESA order on the original Michigan decree, we must
reverse and remand this case for further proceedings consistent
with this opinion and the procedures specified in UIFSA.
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