Gould v. Gould, 2017 Ohio 7047

Matthew filed for divorce in 2013; trial before a magistrate occurred April 8, 2015; magistrate issued decision in August 2015; trial court entered final judgment October 4, 2016 granting divorce.
Two shared parenting plans were at issue: the magistrate’s plan and a plan Matthew filed April 6, 2015 (two days before trial); the trial court adopted Matthew’s April 6, 2015 plan.
The trial court set child support at $0 based on its income findings, including extrapolating Kristi’s quarterly bonus to an annual figure.
Kristi appealed, raising (1) that the court violated R.C. 3109.04(G) by adopting a shared parenting plan filed less than 30 days before the hearing, and (2) that the court improperly extrapolated and used Kristi’s bonus to find income disparity and award no child support.
The trial court had evidence only of Kristi’s $40,000 base salary and a single first-quarter bonus (about $2,000); Kristi did not present multi-year bonus documentation required by R.C. 3119.05(D).

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the trial court erred by adopting a shared parenting plan filed two days before trial contrary to R.C. 3109.04(G)	Gould: plan was untimely under the 30-day filing requirement and should not have been adopted	Matthew: trial court has discretion; Gould waived timeliness objection by not raising it below	Court: statute is directory; Gould waived the timeliness argument; trial court did not abuse discretion in adopting the plan
Whether the trial court erred by extrapolating Kristi’s quarterly bonus to annual income and using it to set child support at $0	Gould: court improperly speculated and failed to follow R.C. 3119.05(D) for bonuses; court should not have used extrapolated bonus	Matthew: only evidence was the quarterly bonus and Kristi’s testimony that bonuses would repeat; court properly relied on record	Court: no reversible error — Kristi failed to submit required multi-year bonus evidence; court reasonably extrapolated from the only evidence presented

Blakemore v. Blakemore, 5 Ohio St.3d 217 (1983) (defines abuse of discretion standard)
Pons v. Ohio State Medical Board, 66 Ohio St.3d 619 (1993) (appellate court may not substitute its judgment for trial court under abuse of discretion)
Harris v. Harris, 105 Ohio App.3d 671 (1995) (R.C. 3109.04(G) filing deadline for shared parenting plans is directory, not mandatory; court may relax deadline if opportunity to respond exists)
Stores Realty Co. v. Cleveland, 41 Ohio St.2d 41 (1975) (issues not raised at trial or by objection are ordinarily waived on appeal)