Trent v. Trent

Citations

• 226 Conn. App. 791

Syllabus

The plaintiff, whose marriage to the defendant previously had been dis- solved, appealed to this court from the trial court's judgments granting the defendant's motion for contempt, which alleged that the plaintiff had failed to pay his share of child care expenses, denying the plaintiff's motion for contempt, which alleged that the defendant had failed to comply with a discovery order, and denying the plaintiff's motion to modify alimony and child support. Held: 1. The trial court abused its discretion when it granted the defendant's motion for contempt: the defendant failed to establish by clear and convincing evidence that the plaintiff had violated the court order that required him to pay 76 percent of qualifying child care expenses and that any such violation was wilful because she failed to satisfy her burden of proving that the child care costs for which she sought reim- bursement were qualifying costs that were necessary to allow her to maintain her employment; moreover, because the defendant failed to comply with the plaintiff's requests for documentation verifying that the child care expenses for which she sought reimbursement were neces- sary to maintain her employment, the record, at best, demonstrated that the plaintiff ceased reimbursing the defendant for such expenses due to a good faith dispute over whether those costs were eligible for reim- bursement under the applicable child support regulation (§ 46b-215a-2c (g) (2)). 2. The trial court did not err in denying the plaintiff's motion for contempt; the evidence in the record that the defendant did not have knowledge of the trial court's discovery order because she did not receive correspon- dence from her attorney was sufficient to support the court's finding that the plaintiff had failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant's noncompliance with that order was wilful. 3. The trial court abused its discretion in denying the plaintiff's motion to modify alimony and child suppor