Taylor v. Taylor

121 So. 3d 987, 2012 WL 5974573, 2012 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 316
CourtCourt of Civil Appeals of Alabama
DecidedNovember 30, 2012
Docket2110420
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 121 So. 3d 987 (Taylor v. Taylor) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Taylor v. Taylor, 121 So. 3d 987, 2012 WL 5974573, 2012 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 316 (Ala. Ct. App. 2012).

Opinion

BRYAN, Judge.

James Kevin Taylor (“the father”) appeals from a judgment of the Lauderdale Circuit Court (“the trial court”) that divorced him from Michelle Taylor (“the mother”) insofar as it awarded him separate visitation schedules for the parties’ two children and ordered him to pay one-half of the expenses related to the children’s extracurricular activities and one-half the cost of private-school tuition for the older child.

Procedural History

The mother filed a complaint for a divorce on December 18, 2009, alleging incompatibility of temperament and adultery as grounds for the divorce. The mother requested, among other things, custody of the parties’ two children — a boy born in June 1999 (“the son”) and a girl born in July 2009 (“the daughter”). On December 80, 2009, the trial court entered a preliminary order that required the mother and the father to “coordinate the payment of fixed monthly expenses” and that stated that “[t]he Court intends that both parties contribute to the payment of monthly expenses in the amounts and in the manner they did when they were cohabitating as husband and wife.” The father subsequently filed an answer to the mother’s complaint.

The record indicates that the trial court conducted an ore tenus proceeding over six days from October 2010 through August 2011. On November 15, 2011, the trial court entered a judgment divorcing the parties on the ground of incompatibility of temperament. The parties were awarded joint legal custody of the children, and the mother was awarded primary physical custody of the children. The father was awarded visitation with the son based on a 14-day rotating schedule wherein the father was awarded 6 days and 6 nights of visitation with the son. The mother’s custodial period with the son was the remaining 8 days and 8 nights of every 14-day period. The father was awarded visitation with the daughter as set forth in the “Standard Visitation Guidelines adopted by the Circuit Court of Lauderdale County.”1 Based on that schedule, in the same 14-day period, the father was awarded 2 days and 2 nights of visitation with the daughter, as well as one 4-hour midweek visit every other week.2 The divorce judgment and the standard visitation schedule specifically defined additional visitation times for the father on holidays and during the summer.

The trial court ordered the father to pay the mother $1,049 a month in child support for the children. Additionally, the mother and the father were ordered to “equally split any and all expenses for extracurricular activities of the minor children.... ” The trial court found that the mother had spent $1,027.95 for a band instrument for the son, and it ordered the father to reim[990]*990burse the mother $514 for the instrument. The trial court also ordered the mother and the father to “equally split the tuition for the [son] at Shoals Christian School as long as the [son] remains enrolled there.” The trial court further found that, “pursuant to its preliminary order that the parties contribute to the payment of monthly expenses in the amount and in the manner they did when living as husband and wife, ... the [father] is ordered to reimburse the [mother] tuition expenses in the sum of $3,400....”

On December 9, 2011, the father filed a postjudgment motion pursuant to Rule 59, Ala. R. Civ. P. The father requested, among other things not pertinent to this appeal, that the trial court amend the divorce judgment to award him additional visitation with the daughter so that his visitation with the daughter would be conducted at the same time that he had visitation with the son. The father argued that he wanted to maximize his opportunities to have custody of the son and the daughter at the same time and to limit the amount of time and expense incurred to transport the children. The father also requested that the requirement that he pay one-half of extracurricular-activity expenses and private-school tuition be vacated in light of the fact that he was paying the recommended amount of child support pursuant to Rule 32, Ala. R. Jud. Admin. The father argued that those awards were not supported by the evidence and that the trial court had no authority to make those awards in addition to requiring him to pay the full amount of child support recommend by the child-support guidelines. The trial court denied the father’s motion on December 21, 2011, and the father filed a timely notice of appeal.

Issues

On appeal, the father raises two issues for this court’s review: (1) whether his visitation time with the children should have been scheduled so that he exercised visitation with the daughter during times that he had visitation with the son and (2) whether the trial court erred by ordering him to pay one-half of extracurricular-activity expenses and private-school tuition in addition to child support pursuant to the Rule 32 child-support guidelines.

Facts

The parties were married in June 1993, and they separated in August 2009. During the marriage, the parties lived in Florence, but, after the parties separated, the father moved in with his parents in Cherokee. It was undisputed that the father had three extramarital affairs during the parties marriage, but the mother testified that the father had admitted to having four extramarital affairs. The mother forgave the father for the first three affairs, although the father admitted to only two affairs at that time, and the parties lived together for several years after the mother learned of the affairs. The father began his last affair in February 2009 when the mother was pregnant with the daughter. It was undisputed that the mother found out about the affair only a few weeks before the daughter was born. The father alleged that he had ended the affair before the daughter was born and that he had not resumed the affair after the daughter was born despite the fact that the parties separated within a few weeks after the daughter’s birth. The woman that the father had had an affair with testified that the affair began in February 2009 and lasted approximately one year. She later testified that the father had ended the affair before the daughter was born in July 2009. The father’s mother testified that she was under the impression that the father was still seeing the woman he had had an affair with after he separated from the mother because the father occasionally went to the [991]*991woman’s house and because the father had taken her to visit the woman around Christmas. Suffice it to say, the trial court could have disbelieved the father’s testimony that he had not resumed his relationship with the woman he had had an affair with after the daughter’s birth in July 2009.

After the parties separated in August 2009, the parties agreed to a visitation schedule that allowed the father to have custody of the children approximately 50% of the time. It was undisputed that the son enjoyed the visitation schedule that the parties utilized during the pendency of the proceedings below and that the son had continued to excel in school and in sports despite the fact that it took the father 35 to 45 minutes to get to the child’s school in Florence from his parents’ home in Cherokee. The mother agreed to continue the visitation schedule as it existed with the son, except that she requested that the son be returned to her on Sunday evenings by 5:30 so that he could attend church with her.

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Related

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266 So. 3d 1108 (Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama, 2018)
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154 So. 3d 1043 (Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama, 2014)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
121 So. 3d 987, 2012 WL 5974573, 2012 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 316, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/taylor-v-taylor-alacivapp-2012.