Zheng v. Xia

Citations

• 204 Conn. App. 302

Syllabus

The plaintiff, whose marriage to the defendant previously had been dis- solved, appealed to this court from the trial court's order granting the defendant's postdissolution motion to modify child support, claiming that the court improperly ordered him to pay the defendant a certain percentage of his annual bonus income as supplemental child support. In issuing its order, the trial court deviated from the child support guidelines on the basis of the significant disparity between the parties' incomes. Held that the trial court's reason for deviating from the child support guidelines constituted an abuse of its legal discretion: the court made no specific finding as to why the guidelines were inequitable or inappropriate, save for alluding to the significant disparity between the parties' incomes, and that reason to deviate from the child support guidelines failed as a matter of law because, although our Supreme Court has stated that income disparity may be considered when the custodial parent has the higher income and deviation from the presump- tive support amount would enhance the noncustodial parent's ability to foster a relationship with the child, that was not the situation in the present case, in which the unemployed defendant was the custodial parent who had no income aside from child support, and, accordingly, the court improperly considered the disparity between the parties' incomes in ordering the defendant to pay a certain percentage of his net bonus income as supplemental child support. Submitted on briefs December 3, 2020—officially released May 4, 2021