Wald v. Cortland-Wald

Citations

• 226 Conn. App. 752

Syllabus

The defendant appealed to this court from, inter alia, the trial court's judg- ment dissolving her marriage to the plaintiff. The court approved a pendente lite agreement in November, 2019, and, in April, 2021, the defendant filed an agreement for dissolution signed by both parties in which they agreed, inter alia, that the plaintiff would transfer twelve months of his G.I. Bill benefits to the defendant for her continuing education and pay 35 percent of his net military pension to her. The defendant thereafter withdrew her request for approval of the agree- ment, and the court found that the agreement was unenforceable. In October, 2021, the court ordered, inter alia, that the defendant should continue to receive 35 percent of the plaintiff's net military pension and 100 percent of his G.I. Bill benefits. At the time of the judgment in January, 2022, the parties' had one minor child, and they continued to live together in the marital home. The court awarded the parties' joint legal and shared physical custody of their child and ordered the plaintiff to pay $300 per week in child support, which was a downward deviation from the presumptive child support amount according to the child sup- port guidelines, and it further ordered that the child support obligation would not commence until one week after the sale of the marital resi- dence. Held: 1. The trial court abused its discretion in calculating the plaintiff's child support obligation: a. The trial court erred by decreasing the plaintiff's obligation based on the parties' shared physical custody of the minor child; the court failed to make the requisite findings as required by the applicable regulation (§ 46b-215a-5c (b) (6) (A)) that would support a deviation from the presumptive amount of child support, specifically, that the plaintiff or the defendant would have substantially increased or decreased expenses due to the shared parenting plan and that sufficient funds would remain for the parent receiving support