Donna K. CHRISTIANSON, Appellee, v. Robert M. ELY, Appellant.
No. 137-1997
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Decided Dec. 17, 2003.
838 A.2d 630 | 647
Submitted May 13, 2003.
For the forgoing reasons, I respectfully dissent.
Brian W. Ulmer, for Donna K. Christianson.
Before CAPPY, C.J., CASTILLE, NIGRO, NEWMAN, SAYLOR, EAKIN, LAMB, JJ.
OPINION
Justice NEWMAN.
In this case, we determine the effective date for an award of child support, where a mother filed two Complaints, eleven years apart, against a father. Our answer will dictate the amount of arrearages that the father owes for support of his child. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the Order of the Superior Court, which held that the father‘s support obligation arises on the earlier date.
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Although this case has a lengthy and tortuous procedural history, the facts are undisputed.
On August 19, 1985, Tenaya Christianson (Tenaya) was born to Donna Christianson (Mother) and Bruce Christianson (Husband), who were then a married couple. Two years later, Mother left Husband, taking their three children, including Tenaya. On February 27, 1987, Mother sought child support from Husband for all three children. On March 30, 1987, although an Order for support was entered for the two other children, there was no disposition made as to Tenaya. Mother filed a Complaint for Support against Robert M. Ely (Ely) on July 8, 1988, in the Court of Common Pleas of Union County, on behalf of Tenaya. On November 10, 1988, the district attorney‘s office for Snyder County filed a petition to with
Ely objected to the Complaint that Mother filed on July 8, 1988, claiming that Tenaya was born to an intact marriage and that, as a result, the presumption of paternity applied. The trial court ordered Ely to submit to genetic testing. Ely appealed to the Superior Court, which held that Husband had not rebutted the presumption of paternity. Christianson v. Ely, 390 Pa.Super. 398, 568 A.2d 961, 966 (1990). The Superior Court vacated the Order of the trial court and remanded the matter to determine the actual relationship of the presumptive father (Husband) and Mother and to determine whether estoppel applied.
After remand, the Union County court did not hold a hearing. On August 19, 1992, former President Judge Wayne Bromfield (President Judge Bromfield) entered an Order remanding the support action to the Court of Common Pleas of Snyder County (trial court) for “final processing pursuant to the
On July 14, 1998, Mother filed a second support action against Husband requesting support for Tenaya and their other two children. Following a hearing on June 10, 1999, the trial court found that the presumption of paternity was overcome and ordered the parties to appear for genetic testing. The testing showed that Husband was not the biological father
On September 21, 1999, Mother filed a third Complaint for Support against Ely, which was docketed at 137-1997, even though the Complaint originally filed at that number had been withdrawn. Ely filed Preliminary Objections, asserting estoppel and laches, which the trial court denied on February 9, 2000. It issued an Order to appear for genetic testing and scheduled a bench trial to establish paternity. On September 22, 2000, Ely executed an Acknowledgement of Paternity/Waiver of Trial. The genetic testing was conducted on July 10, 2000 and resulted in a 99.91% probability of paternity for Ely. RR at 33A.
As a result of the genetic testing, Ely no longer denied paternity, and the parties proceeded to a support conference. The trial court issued a Temporary Order on September 22, 2000, which imposed on Ely a monthly obligation of $562.45 on behalf of Tenaya. The parties were unable to agree on the effective date of the support Order and, hence, the amount of the arrearages. Ely argued that the effective date should be September 21, 1999, the date when the third Complaint was filed against him, since it was this Complaint to which he stipulated paternity. Mother argued that the effective date should be July 8, 1988, when she filed her first Complaint for Support against Ely. Mother then filed a Motion to Determine Arrearages on October 19, 2000.
On December 21, 2000, the trial court issued its Opinion, finding that the duty of Ely to support Tenaya accrued at the time of her birth in 1985. It noted that the first Complaint against Ely was filed in 1988, and that Mother had not terminated or discontinued the 1988 action and Ely did not
In a Memorandum Opinion filed on November 8, 2001, the Superior Court affirmed the Order of the trial court and adopted its Opinion.
We granted a limited allowance of appeal to consider two issues: (1) whether a subsequent complaint nullifies a prior, unresolved support complaint in determining the effective date for support; and (2) whether arrearages may accrue against a putative father when the support action remains unresolved for fifteen years through no fault of the putative parent.
DISCUSSION
This case has traveled a winding and bumpy road. It is less complicated to articulate the question it raises than it has been to recount its protracted history. What is the effective date of Ely‘s support obligation for Tenaya? Mother contends it is July 8, 1988, the date when she filed her first Complaint against him. Ely no longer objects to his duty to support Tenaya; rather, he argues that his obligation should accrue from September 21, 1999, the date when Mother filed her third Complaint against him, which resulted in his admitting paternity. For the reasons explained below, we affirm the Opinion of the Superior Court.
In our appellate review of child support matters, we use an abuse of discretion standard. Bowser v. Blom, 569 Pa. 609, 807 A.2d 830 (2002). “A support order will not be disturbed on appeal unless the trial court failed to consider properly the requirements of the
To understand the disputed issue regarding the effective date, it is necessary to excavate the layers of Complaints that Mother filed and track them as they proceeded through the judicial system. For purposes of our determination, we need look only at her three Complaints against Ely.3 Unfortunately, this task is complicated by ambiguous language in an earlier trial court Order and by subsequent confusion in assigning docket numbers.
The first Complaint involved in the dispute is the one that Mother filed against Ely on July 8, 1988. Despite the Superior Court order for remand in 1990 to determine Husband‘s paternity, a hearing was never held. To complicate the matter even further, on August 19, 1992, President Judge Bromfield entered the ambiguously worded Order remanding the support action for “final processing.” The Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure do not define this term, and each party
On December 21, 2000, the trial court found that the record did not reveal an order “terminating, suspending or vacating” the 1988 Complaint for Support, as those terms are defined in
If an action is not commenced by a complaint, the Prothonotary, upon praecipe of the defendant, shall enter a rule upon the plaintiff to file a complaint. If a complaint is not filed within twenty days after service of the rule, the Prothonotary, upon praecipe of the defendant, shall enter a judgment of non pros.
With the 1988 Complaint hovering in the background, Mother filed her second support action against Ely on September 9, 1997 (the 1997 Complaint). After Ely filed Preliminary Objections and several extensions for supporting briefs, Mother executed the standard Petition to Withdraw and Terminate Action in Support, filling in the blank space for her reason as follows: “Because the first complaint is STILL OPEN i.e. NO
Mother filed her third and final Complaint for Support against Ely on September 21, 1999. This action was assigned the same docket number as the 1997 Complaint, which had been dismissed. The trial court noted that this number was assigned “despite the fact that the first complaint filed to this number had been withdrawn and that the initial support action filed to No. 109–1988 remained open.” Trial Court Opinion dated December 21, 2000 at 3. Thus, the three Complaints that Mother filed against Ely are: (1) the 1988 Complaint, docket number 109–1988; (2) the withdrawn 1997 Complaint, docket number 97-0137, and (3) the 1999 Complaint, docket number 97-0137.
On September 22, 2000, Ely executed a document admitting paternity, and the trial court established his monthly support obligation. The instant dispute between the parties crystallized here. Mother takes the position that it is July 8, 1988, the date of her first Complaint, and Ely maintains that it is September 21, 1999, the date of her third Complaint. By this time, Tenaya was fifteen years old.
Having sifted through the procedural untidiness created by the 1988 Complaint, which had never been “finally processed,” and the 1999 Complaint, docketed to a case dismissed in 1997, we can now proceed to resolve the question of the date on which the support obligation arose.
We start with
There is a sound policy favoring retroactivity in most cases, because the party entitled to support should not be penalized for having to resort to time-consuming court proceedings. Our rules of procedure provide that a support order shall be effective from the date of the complaint unless the order states otherwise. Moreover, we
The preference for retroactivity is congruent with the purpose of an order of support, which is “to assure the party requiring support a reasonable living allowance.” Hainaut v. Hainaut, 410 Pa.Super. 316, 599 A.2d 1009, 1011 (1991) (quoting Com. ex rel. Bishop v. Bishop, 234 Pa.Super. 600, 341 A.2d 153, 156 (1975)).
The case sub judice is a good example of the time-consuming nature of the litigation process, and the reason why the Rule and the courts prefer retroactivity in support matters. Tenaya was born in 1985, and the question of paternity was not resolved until 2000. While each of the parties alleges that the other could have resolved things more quickly, the fact is that Tenaya received no support for fifteen years as the parties battled in court. In Crawford v. Crawford, 429 Pa.Super. 540, 633 A.2d 155, 163 (1993), the Superior Court, referring to the purpose of retroactive support in alleviating hardship, stated: “[I]t follows that the longer the delay, the more apropos retroactivity becomes.” The court cited Shovlin v. Shovlin, 318 Pa.Super. 516, 465 A.2d 673 (1983), where the court found retroactivity appropriate with a fourteen-month delay between the date of filing the complaint and the award of support. In describing the history of
The “Appellant, not Appellee, bears the burden of proof to rebut the presumption of retroactivity.” Karp v. Karp, 455 Pa.Super. 21, 686 A.2d 1325, 1329 (1996) (citing Crawford). Therefore, Ely has the burden to prove his obligation should not be retroactive to the 1988 Complaint.
Ely opposes retroactivity to 1988 on two grounds. We agree with the trial court and the Superior Court that each is baseless. First, he argues that retroactive support based on the 1988 Complaint is barred by laches, estoppel, and other considerations, because Mother did not proceed with due diligence. He relies on Bonds v. Bonds, 455 Pa.Super. 610, 689 A.2d 275 (1997), as support. However, as the trial court appropriately noted, that case did not involve a child support claim; rather, it dealt with the enforcement of a marital settlement agreement and the recovery of counsel fees. Furthermore, the Superior Court in Bonds concluded that laches, or equitable estoppel, did not apply to preclude a wife from enforcing a property settlement. Laches does not arise unless a “party‘s rights have been so prejudiced by the delay of another in pursuing a claim that it would be an injustice to permit the assertion of the claim against the party so prejudiced.” Id. at 278. The record in the case does not show any prejudice to Ely‘s rights. He knew that Mother had been pursuing support from him since 1988. Tenaya was born in 1985. While Ely understandably wants his support obligation to begin in 1999 rather than 1988, the fact that the trial court and the Superior Court did not honor his preference does not constitute prejudice.
Ely claims that if his support obligation runs from July 1988, he will owe Tenaya $87,000 in arrearages and that this is the “sort of prejudice that the laws of equity seek to avoid.” Brief for Appellant at 15. He asserts that an award of child support must be “fair, non-confiscatory and attendant to the circumstances of the parties.” Calabrese v. Calabrese, 452 Pa.Super. 497, 682 A.2d 393, 396 (1996), petition for allowance of appeal denied, 547 Pa. 722, 689 A.2d 230 (1997). While we agree with this principle, we do not concur in his implication that an award of $87,000 would violate the requirement of fairness and would be confiscatory. The record does not show any such impact on Ely; he has made no showing of any effect on him or his finances.
Ely states that “the unfortunate reality of this case is that no amount of arrearages will compensate Tenaya for lack of support she received for the first 15 years of her life, but would only serve to punish [him] when those arrearages undoubtedly accrued through no fault of his own.” Brief for Appellant at 8. We disagree with Ely‘s self-serving conclusion of the futility of compensating Tenaya and his lack of “fault” in the situation regarding her first fifteen years.6 While Mother‘s legal actions played out over a twelve-year period, she was not the only one responsible for the lengthy proceedings. She had been trying to obtain support from two men, Husband and Ely, during that period. Since 1988, the record shows that Ely exhibited varying degrees of opposition, resistance, and passivity with respect to the efforts of Mother. Examples of this behavior include his successful appeal of a 1989 Order for blood testing to determine paternity, his failure to seek a judgment of non pros regarding the 1988 Complaint, and his preliminary objections and requests for extensions with respect to the 1999 Complaint. Although he was first sued for support in 1988, he did not admit paternity for another twelve years, until a bench trial was scheduled for September of 2000.
Contrary to the assertions of Ely, any dilatory conduct by Mother cannot infringe upon the legal right of Tenaya for financial support. As the trial court found, that right accrued with her birth in 1985. In Roboski v. Fink, 447 Pa.Super. 520, 669 A.2d 1017 (1996), the Superior Court held that an action involving a four year delay in instituting a paternity suit was not barred by laches, stating: “The doctrine of Laches is an equitable doctrine, while support is an obligation at law. Therefore Laches as a defense is not available in paternity actions.” Id. at 1017.
This Court has stated that “[a] parent has the responsibility to provide care, control, and subsistence for his or her child, and a duty to ... support the child. This parental obligation ‘is a positive duty and requires affirmative performance.‘” Petition of Lutheran Children and Family Service of Eastern Pennsylvania, 456 Pa. 429, 321 A.2d 618, 620 (1974) (internal citations and quotations omitted). In a child support hearing, the “main concern is for the welfare of the child. Each parent has a duty which is ‘well nigh absolute’ to support his or her minor children and each may have to make sacrifices in order to meet this burden.” Scanlon, 457 A.2d at 102.
This analysis is not cogent. First, although
Mother‘s position is more persuasive and better reasoned, with her reliance on
It is interesting to note that Ely has ignored our recent ruling in Bowser. Although we limited our review to the issue of whether the court erred in denying a mother‘s request for counsel fees in a support matter, we affirmed the Superior Court‘s decision, which made child support retroactive to the date of the mother‘s second complaint, rather than to the date of her prior complaint, which had been dismissed. At first glance, this would seem to support Ely‘s argument that his obligation should commence with the filing of the 1999 Com
There is, however, a more critical difference between Ely and the father in Bowser. As the Superior Court noted in Bowser, the father had been paying child support voluntarily, without a court order, from the time the first complaint was dismissed. This factor weighed heavily in our Court‘s decision to affirm the refusal to award counsel fees. We looked at the totality of the circumstances and noted:
This is not a situation where the father was shirking his moral and financial obligations, requiring legal action to force him to accept his responsibilities. To the contrary, [father] readily acknowledged paternity and accepted his paternal responsibility, which led to the original support agreement and the dismissal of [mother‘s] initial support action.
Bowser, 569 Pa. 609, 807 A.2d 830, 837. Unlike the case sub judice, “[t]he litigation of [mother‘s] support complaint was neither protracted nor particularly contentious. [Father] did not deny—indeed, he has never denied—his obligation of support.” Id. at 837.
Ely‘s reference to “double dipping” is difficult to comprehend. He seems to imply that if the 1988 Complaint were not nullified, he would be subject to paying arrearages twice. In fact, the trial court did find that both Complaints remained open; the Superior Court affirmed this determination and neither of those tribunals suggested that arrearages could be levied against Ely more than once. If he intended this
We agree that the wording of the Order regarding “final processing” was ambiguous, as the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure do not define it, and that no court took action pursuant to it. Even so, the parties had the ability on their own to discontinue or non pros the 1988 litigation, and they did not. Mother did not move to terminate or discontinue the action—indeed, she specifically withdrew her 1997 Complaint because the 1988 Complaint was still open and there was no need for two. Ely did not undertake to terminate the 1988 Complaint, by filing an action for judgment of non pros. The trial court correctly found that the 1988 action “was neither discontinued nor terminated. [Ely] himself did not seek the entry of a judgment of non pros, but simply acquiesced in Mother‘s sporadic and subsequently aborted attempts to secure child support for her daughter.” Trial Court Opinion dated December 21, 2000 at 5.
The trial court appropriately weighed the ramifications of a support Order deemed retroactive to July 1988 and found that “such considerations are outweighed by the well-established duty of support owing to [Tenaya], which accrued at the time of her birth in 1985.” Trial Court Opinion dated December 21, 2000 at 4. While Ely argues that equity must prevent an outcome requiring him to pay $87,000 to Tenaya, and that, impliedly, such a large amount of money is “confiscatory” or “punitive,” our view comports with that of the trial court, as affirmed by the Superior Court. The 1988 Complaint was not terminated, the support rules mandate retroactivity to the date of filing, and parents owe a duty of support to their children that accrues at birth. While we are mindful that the amount of arrearages is significant, we must be even more sensitive to the welfare of Tenaya, who did not have the
CONCLUSION
For these reasons stated above, we affirm the Order of the Superior Court.
Justice EAKIN files a dissenting opinion in which Justice CASTILLE and LAMB join.
Justice EAKIN, Dissenting.
I dissent for two reasons, the first procedural. This appeal is of an order from a complaint filed in 1999; despite the eclectic procedural history, the fact remains that while appellee filed a complaint in 1988, she filed this complaint in 1999, and to this complaint alone appellant conceded paternity. There are no currently relevant proceedings pursuant to the 1988 complaint; indeed, there have been none since the trial court ordered, unsuccessfully, the “final processing” of this stagnant matter. The rule of retroactivity makes support presumptively applicable from the filing the complaint which results in the order, which is 1999; it should not be retroactive to the filing of a complaint abandoned long ago.
Appellee never revived or amended the 1988 complaint; she filed a new complaint in 1999, which commenced a new action.
Procedural impropriety aside, the majority‘s result is concurrently unfair to appellant, and unavailing to the child. Had appellant been the cause of this delay, I would afford him no sympathy or relief. However, he is not. He challenged the first complaint and won, the matter being remanded for proceedings that were never scheduled, and which appellee never requested or pursued. Appellant was not the moving party; there was no obligation on his part to pursue anything. Indeed, when faced with an order of the Superior Court that she present evidence to overcome the parental presumption, appellee did nothing. The logical conclusion appellant or the trial court could draw from her inactivity is that she could not meet her burden.
The only subsequent court action was Judge Bromfield‘s order to “process” the inactive case.
It is the policy of the unified judicial system to bring each pending matter to a final conclusion as promptly as possible consistent with the character of the matter and the resources of the system. Where a matter has been inactive for an unreasonable period of time, the tribunal, on its own motion, shall enter an appropriate order terminating the matter.
The majority suggests appellant “acquiesced” to the 1988 claim‘s validity by failing to pursue a judgment of non pros, under
Appellant questioned paternity in the face of the 1988 complaint, pointing out that appellee was still living with her husband at the time of conception; his position was upheld at the appellate level. See Christianson v. Ely, 390 Pa.Super. 398, 568 A.2d 961 (1990). If there was something to acquiesce in, it was his victory in the Superior Court, and the order of the trial court sending the case for “final processing“; this, the functional equivalent of a non pros, was an order to which appellee also “acquiesced.” Appellant had no duty to do anything more on the dormant, dismissed-but-not-processed matter. It was appellee who acquiesced to the legal demise of her 1988 complaint by years of inactivity in the face of an order putting the burden to proceed on her, an unchallenged order to end the case, and by her multiple subsequent complaints.
The rule of retroactivity ensures children do not lose their right to support as a result of the delay inherent in the system
The custodial parent seeking support has an affirmative duty to file for support, and, I believe, an obligation to pursue it actively. Retroactivity does not date from pre-filing status or events; the Rules require a parent to file a claim for support in order to start the clock running on retroactivity. See
The practical irony of the majority‘s result is that this child is unlikely to benefit from this punitive order of retroactivity. The total monthly payment, the base order of $562.45, plus an amount toward arrears, will not be higher one way or the other. Appellant is assessed 15 years arrears; the child will be the subject of the primary order for only another three years. Appellant will be ordered to pay support for those three years according to his means (about $6,750 a year), to which will be added a payment toward the arrears. That is, the order will reflect his ability to pay, plus the maximum additional amount he can afford toward the arrears. Regardless of the total of the arrears, the periodic support payment will be as much as he can lawfully be made to pay, regardless of the total arrears owed.
If retroactive to the 1999 complaint, as I believe it should be, appellant would have four years of accumulated arrears
Parents must attend to the best interests of their children; if they file a support claim, we must require that they follow through with it. We should not tolerate, much less encourage, the hibernation displayed by appellee here. She abandoned her 1988 complaint. She offered legal apathy in the face of court orders. She filed new complaints without explanation for her languish and apathy in the intervening years. Seeing a result that goes against the grain of retroactivity‘s purpose and rewards her inaction, I respectfully offer my dissent.
Justice CASTILLE and LAMB join in this dissenting opinion.