Spruce v. Spruce

2 S.W.3d 192
CourtCourt of Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedJanuary 14, 1999
StatusPublished
Cited by35 cases

This text of 2 S.W.3d 192 (Spruce v. Spruce) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Spruce v. Spruce, 2 S.W.3d 192 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1999).

Opinions

OPINION

SUSANO, J.

In this post-divorce proceeding, we are asked to review the judgment of the trial court1 denying the Rule 60.022 motion of the original defendant, Lori Jean McDo[194]*194well, formerly Spruce (“Mother”). The parties’ final judgment of absolute divorce was entered on April 14, 1994. It recites, approves, and adopts the parties’ agreement pertaining to all matters then at issue between them, including child support for their two minor children. On September 11, 1997, some 41 months after the final judgment was entered, Mother, who had been awarded custody of the children in the divorce judgment, filed a motion3 against her former husband, Barry Alan Spruce (“Father”), predicated on subsections (4) and (5) of Rule 60.02, Tenn. R.Civ.P.,4 seeking to be “relieve[d],” see Rule 60.02, of that portion of the divorce ■judgment awarding child support of $100 per month. The trial court denied the motion, finding no basis for Rule 60.02 relief. Mother appealed, arguing that the original award of $100 per month for two children is not in compliance with the Child Support Guidelines (“Guidelines”) promulgated pursuant to T.C.A. § 36-5-101(e)(1); that the trial court erred, at the time of the divorce, in deviating from the Guidelines; and, finally, that the procedure at the time of the divorce was irregular, and such as to justify the relief sought in this case.

I.

The standard of our review is well-stated in Underwood v. Zurich Ins. Co., 854 S.W.2d 94 (Tenn.1993):

A motion for relief based on Rule 60.02 grounds addresses itself to the sound discretion of the trial judge. The scope of review of an appellate court is to determine if the discretion was abused. (Citation omitted).

Id. at 97.

The burden is on the party seeking relief pursuant to Rule 60.02 “to show that he [or she] is entitled to relief.” Steioff v. Steioff 833 S.W.2d 94, 97 (Tenn.App.1992).

II.

Cutting through the verbiage of Mother’s filings, including her brief, we conclude that the basic thrust of her position is that the trial court, in setting child support in the divorce judgment, deviated downward from the amount mandated by the Guidelines, and that it did so without a proper basis for such a deviation. She relies on the Supreme Court case of Jones v. Jones, 930 S.W.2d 541 (Tenn.1996). She contends that this downward deviation was not proper when “considered in light of the provisions dealing with such deviation— [Tenn.Comp.R. & Regs., ch.] 1240-2M-.04(2) and (4).” See id. at 545.

In this case, neither party claims ignorance of the operative facts. On the contrary, it is clear that each of the parties [195]*195gave their consent to the child support agreement based upon existing facts then known to both of them. This is not a case involving a mutual, or even a unilateral, mistake of fact. What Mother is really complaining about is the fact that the law was improperly applied to the known facts — first by the parties in reaching their agreement, and then by the court in approving it. Even if true, this is a mistake of law and not a mistake of fact. A mistake of law “occurs when a party knows the facts of the case but is ignorant of the legal consequences.” Haas v. Haas, C/A No. 02A01-9709-CV-00241, 1998 WL 599529, *4 (Tenn.App. W.S., filed September 11, 1998).

The Supreme Court has opined that if “ignorance of the law is a proper ground for relief under Rule 60.02 ..., it is hard to conceive how any judgment could be safe from assault on that ground.” Food Lion, Inc. v. Washington County Beer Bd., 700 S.W.2d 893, 896 (Tenn.1985). In fact, the cases clearly hold that a mistake of law is not a basis for Rule 60.02 relief. Metropolitan Dev. & Hous. Agency v. Hill, 518 S.W.2d 754, 768 (Tenn.App.1974).

In the Haas case, cited earlier in this opinion, the trial court, acting on a Rule 60.02 motion, reduced the father’s child support obligation because it found that the parties, at the time of the divorce, had “mistakenly applied the Child Support Guidelines by calculating child support using Father’s gross income rather than his net income.” Haas, 1998 WL 599529, at *2. This court reversed, finding that the trial court had committed a mistake of law that could not be reached by a Rule 60.02 motion. In the course of our opinion, this court stated the following:

From the record, it is evident that Father was aware of the facts of the case, but was ignorant of the law. This is not the type of mistake that Tenn.R.Civ.P. 60.02 is designed to correct.

1998 WL 599529, at *4. The same thing can be said of Mother in the instant case.

While the motion in Haas was based on subsection (1) of Rule 60.02 — not on subsections (4) or (5), as is the motion in the instant case — we do not believe that this is legally significant. In both cases, the moving party seeks to set aside a judgment because of a mistake of law. Generally speaking, this is not the office of a Rule 60.02 motion.

Accordingly, Mother’s motion for Rule 60.02 relief based upon an alleged illegal deviation from the Guidelines is found to be without merit.

III.

Mother also seeks to set aside the child support decree in the judgment of divorce by attacking a filing made by Father’s counsel on the day the divorce was granted.5 The document in question is a trial court-furnished, fill-in-the-blanks form entitled “Certificate of Compliance With/Departure From Child Support Guidelines.” The testimony at the Rule 60.02 hearing indicates that the trial court requires that the form be completed in connection with all uncontested divorces. It is apparently designed to afford the trial court the benefit of a representation by one or more of the parties or their counsel that the Guidelines have been complied with, or, if not, the reason for deviating from them.

Mother contends that the “Certificate of Compliance” was (1) improperly handled and (2) contains a misstatement as to why the parties were deviating from the Guidelines. Specifically, she claims that a copy of the document was not served on her or her counsel — a failure that, according to her, constitutes a violation of Rule 5.01, Tenn.R.Civ.P.6 Second, she argues that [196]*196the following statement placed in the Cer-tifícate of Compliance by Father’s counsel is an incorrect statement of the reason that prompted the parties to agree to deviate from the Guidelines:

[Father] is in need of financial and vocational rehabilitation and the parties have bargained this arrangement towards that end.

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Bluebook (online)
2 S.W.3d 192, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/spruce-v-spruce-tennctapp-1999.