Ross v. Ross

Citations

• 200 Conn. App. 720

Syllabus

The defendant, whose marriage to the plaintiff previously had been dis- solved, appealed to this court from the postjudgment orders of the trial court modifying the original unallocated alimony and child support order and awarding the plaintiff attorney's fees. The parties' separation agree- ment, which was incorporated into the dissolution judgment, required the defendant to pay the plaintiff 40 percent of his annual gross base cash salary and 25 percent of his gross cash bonus as unallocated alimony and child support from September, 2016 to March, 2023. In December, 2016, the defendant filed a motion for modification in which he sought to reduce his unallocated alimony and child support payments, alleging that there was a substantial change in circumstances because, inter alia, two of the parties' children had reached the age of majority. The trial court granted the motion for modification and ordered that the percentage of annual gross base salary that the defendant is obligated to pay to the plaintiff as unallocated alimony and child support be reduced to 37.5 percent, retroactive to the date the motion was filed. The court also ordered the defendant to pay $27,500 of the plaintiff's attorney's fees. Held: 1. The trial court abused its discretion when it determined the amount of the modified unallocated alimony and child support order; in modifying the original unallocated alimony and child support order, that court failed to unbundle the child support award from the alimony award and failed to consider and apply the child support guidelines and, thereby, to make a finding, as required by the guidelines, as to the presumptive amount of child support payable by the defendant to the plaintiff for the relevant dates, and, if necessary, a finding as to whether, on the basis of the child support guidelines, those amounts were inequitable or inappropriate and a deviation from the guidelines was appropriate. 2. This court declined to reach the merits of the defendant's