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Conrad v. Conrad6/4/2002
the school year, and therefore it is reasonable that Petitioner be allowed to claim Michael for income tax purposes." Wife contends, just as in the case of the trial court's lowering Husband's monthly child support payment from $198 to $100, that without a showing that Husband would incur additional expenses for exercising NCO visitation with Michael, he was not entitled to the award of the tax exemption for Michael. We agree.
As Wife points out in her brief, Assumption 7 of the Form 14 Assumptions states: "The schedule of basic child support obligations assumes that the parent entitled to receive support claims the tax exemption for the children entitled to support." We read this to mean that the calculation of the PCSA is based, in part, on this assumption. Consequently, if the trial court switches the presumed award of the tax exemption from the child support obligee to the obligor, it is, in effect, rebutting the PCSA. As such, to award a tax exemption to a child support obligor, the trial court must comply with the second or rebuttal step of the Woolridge procedure. This, of course, would be true even if the court were not deviating from the dollar amount of the monthly child support payment, which is calculated as the PCSA. Hence, inasmuch as we have already determined that the trial court erred in rebutting downward Husband's monthly child support payment on the basis of his exercising NCO overnight visitation with Michael for failure to show that Husband incurred additional expenses as a result, the court necessarily erred in awarding him the tax exemption for Michael on that same basis.
In summary of this point, because Husband failed to present any evidence as to any additional expenses he would incur as a result of his exercising the four nights of NCO overnight visitation with Michael, the trial court erred in rebutting the PCSA on that basis and awarding Wife $100 in monthly child support and awarding Husband the tax exemption for Michael. As such, we are required to reverse that portion of the trial court's judgment awarding child support and remand for the court to enter its amended judgment awarding Wife child support of $198 per month and the tax exemption for Michael, retroactive to the date child support was ordered to commence in the court's judgment.
II.
In Point II, Wife claims that the trial court erred in including in its division of marital property the $42,900 she received from the settlement of her sexual harassment lawsuit because there was no evidence from which the court could find, as required, that the proceeds still existed for distribution at the time of dissolution. Specifically, she claims that the record reflects that she was neither secreting nor had squandered the settlement proceeds, but had expended them, prior to trial, on her "debt and living expenses," such that as to those proceeds, there was nothing left for the trial court to value or divide as part of the marital estate. In claiming as she does, Wife points out that the judgment of dissolution reflects an intent by the trial court to equalize the division of marital property and debts between the parties. In that regard, the court ordered Husband to pay Wife $6,680 "as an equalization in the property and debt division." Wife contends from this that if the trial court had not erroneously awarded her as marital property $42,900 in sexual harassment settlement proceeds, the equalization payment from Husband would have been significantly higher.
A reviewing court must defer to the trial court's marital property division unless it is improper under the standard of Murphy v. Carron, 536 S.W.2d at 32, or is an abuse of discretion. Ray v. Ray, 877 S.W.2d 648, 651 (Mo.
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