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You can search the entire site. or go to the recent opinions, or the chronological or subject indices. Mattfield v. Mattfield (04/21/2006) sp-6003
Notice: This opinion is subject to correction before
publication in the Pacific Reporter. Readers are
requested to bring errors to the attention of the Clerk
of the Appellate Courts, 303 K Street, Anchorage,
Alaska 99501, phone (907) 264-0608, fax (907) 264-0878,
e-mail corrections@appellate.courts.state.ak.us.
THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF ALASKA
| RODNEY J. MATTFIELD, | ) |
| ) Supreme Court No. S- 11435 | |
| Appellant, | ) |
| ) Superior Court No. 3KN-96-00820 CI | |
| v. | ) |
| ) O P I N I O N | |
| TAMARA M. MATTFIELD, | ) |
| ) No. 6003 - April 21, 2006 | |
| Appellee. | ) |
| ) | |
Appeal from the
Superior Court of the State of Alaska, Third
Judicial District, Kenai, Charles K.
Cranston, Judge pro tem.
Appearances: William T. Ford, Law Offices of
William T. Ford, Anchorage, for Appellant.
Kristine A. Schmidt, Kenai, for Appellee.
Before: Bryner, Chief Justice, Matthews,
Eastaugh, Fabe, and Carpeneti, Justices.
BRYNER, Chief Justice.
I. INTRODUCTION
This appeal raises two separate points arising from a
divorce between Rodney Mattfield and Tamara Mattfield. In both
points, Rodney challenges rulings by the superior court granting
motions for reconsideration filed by Tamara. The first point
involves the superior courts decision to reconsider an order
disbursing to the IRS funds derived from a dissolved family
business; the second involves the courts decision to reconsider a
child support order using estimated income in favor of an order
based on actual earnings. We dismiss Rodneys appeal on the first
point because the challenged order requires further proceedings,
so it fails to qualify as an appealable final judgment. We
affirm the courts rulings on the second point, the child support
issue, concluding that Rodney has failed to establish any
reversible error.
II. FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
Rodney Mattfield and Tamara Mattfield (now Cooke)
married in 1988 and had two children together before Rodney filed
for divorce in 1996. The following year the superior court
entered a divorce decree but reserved all other disputed issues
for further proceedings. Since then the parties have engaged in
ongoing disputes over child custody, child support, and property
division.
In the early 2000s two unrelated controversies arose:
one involved Dash Express, Inc., a family-owned business; the
other involved Rodneys child support obligation. Proceedings on
these issues converged in December 2003 and culminated two months
later in the superior court order that triggered this appeal.
A. Dash Express
Rodney and Tamara incorporated Dash Express, Inc., as a
marital business in 1988. Tamara managed the company, and Rodney
worked there about four hours a day. During the first several
years after the parties separated, an interim order gave Rodney
control over Dash Express but required him to pay Tamara $500 per
month, subject to adjustment in the final property division.
In January 2000 the superior court entered its decision
dividing the marital property. The court found that Tamara was
more likely to successfully operate and maintain Dash Express as
a successful business, so it gave her the option to purchase
Rodneys share of the company; alternatively, the court decided,
Tamara could elect to assign her interest to Rodney on condition
that he execute a promissory note and pay certain corporate
obligations. Tamara initially chose to take over the business,
but several days after notifying the court of her decision, she
filed a motion to change her election. Her motion alleged that,
before handing over Dash Express to Tamara, Rodney ran up the
companys debts, withdrew funds from its accounts, and left the
business insolvent.
In May 2000, after holding a hearing on Tamaras motion,
the superior court found that Rodney had misrepresented Dash
Expresss financial position and acted in bad faith when he
conveyed the business to Tamara. Based on these findings, the
court ordered Rodney to retake control of the company and assume
liability for its debts. The court also ordered both parties to
surrender any Dash Express funds they received so that the money
could be kept on deposit until the court decided how it should be
distributed. The parties eventually deposited $7,758 in the court
registry, asserting conflicting claims to the funds. Rodney
argued that the funds should be used to satisfy Dash Expresss
outstanding debts, including payroll taxes; Tamara argued that at
least some of the funds should be used to reimburse her for costs
she incurred on behalf of Dash Express before Rodney resumed
control of the company.
The status of the Dash Express funds remained unchanged
over most of the next two years. In April 2002 the IRS filed a
levy against the funds for payroll taxes totaling $15,511.69.
The superior court set a hearing in early May 2002 to determine
how to dispose of the funds; after the hearing, the court ordered
further briefing. Progress then stalled until December 22, 2003
nearly twenty months after the May 2002 hearing when the
superior court entered an order requiring all the deposited funds
to be paid to the IRS.
B. Child Support
During the first few years after they separated in
1996, Rodney and Tamara frequently changed their arrangements
for custody and visitation with their children; issues of child
support remained unresolved. The superior court repeatedly
ordered both parties to submit current child support affidavits
and financial records; Tamara generally complied with these
orders; Rodney consistently failed to comply.
The superior court issued its custody decision in
December 1999 but declined to resolve the issue of child support.
Instead, the court again ordered the parties to submit current
child support affidavits and financial records, deferring its
ruling on support until the information became available.
For about two years after the superior court issued
this order, the parties custody arrangements remained unsettled,
and the question of child support remained unresolved. The
custody situation began to stabilize in late 2001. On
November 21, 2001, the superior court entered a modification
order giving the parties shared custody of their older child and
awarding Tamara primary custody of their younger child. Again
the order left child support unresolved, directing the parties to
submit current affidavits, and intending to rule on the issue
once the information was filed. Tamara complied with the order
for new information; Rodney did not. The court took no action on
the issue, and another year passed.
In November 2002 Tamara filed a motion to establish
Rodneys support obligation for the past year from the courts
November 21, 2001, modification order through the date of her
motion. Asserting that Rodney had consistently attempted to
avoid having his child support obligation established by the
Court, Tamara asked that the court refer the issue to the Child
Support Enforcement Division (CSED) because, in Tamaras view,
CSED had better resources to obtain financial information and set
child support, in dealing with intransigent obligors. Rodney
opposed Tamaras motion, arguing that the court was better
equipped than CSED to determine ongoing custody issues, and also
suggesting that income should be imputed to Tamara over the
period in question because she had taken leave from her job to
have a child with her new husband.1
The superior court granted Tamaras motion and referred
the question of child support to CSED, specifically directing the
agency to establish support for the period in question using the
parties actual net incomes during that period. But CSED did not
calculate support on the basis of actual earnings, and instead
submitted a proposed order using estimated earnings. Explaining
that its statutory obligation was confined to establishing
administrative support for cases that were not being handled in
court, the agency insisted that it is simply not possible for
CSED to become involved in every [court] case.
Tamara objected to CSEDs proposed order because it
failed to use actual income, as the court had directed. The
court implicitly agreed with Tamaras objection: It disregarded
CSEDs calculations and instead directed the parties to file
supplemental information within twenty days reflecting their
current incomes. Specifically, the court requested child support
guidelines affidavits for the years 2001 and 2002, complete 2001
and 2002 federal income tax returns, and financial records
showing total income from all sources for both years.
The superior courts order for supplemental information
was issued on April 28, 2003. Tamara complied with the order;
Rodney did not. On November 18, 2003, six months after Rodneys
information was originally due, the superior court issued a sua
sponte order requiring him to appear and show cause why he should
not be held in contempt for disregarding its April 28 order.
Rodney appeared in response to the order on December 22, 2003;
after hearing arguments from the parties, the court declined to
find that Rodney had willfully disobeyed its April 28 order, but
directed him to comply by filing the required information within
twenty days. At the end of the hearing, Rodneys attorney
evidently gave Tamaras attorney copies of the required
information.
By the end of the December 22 contempt hearing, then,
everyone including the judge seems to have expected that the
court would resolve the child support issue soon, using Rodneys
soon-to-be submitted information disclosing his actual income.
And nobody seems to have known, or even suspected, that a
different child support order had just recently been issued an
order at odds with these expectations. What seems to have
happened was this: On November 26, 2003, about a week after
ordering Rodney to appear at the contempt hearing, the superior
court signed, apparently by oversight, the child support order
based on estimated income that CSED had proposed ten months
before. For unexplained reasons, moreover, the November 26 child
support order remained undelivered for about three weeks; then,
on December 19, just three days before the contempt hearing, it
was faxed to the offices of the parties attorneys. Based on
their conduct at the December 22 contempt hearing, it seems that
neither attorney had yet seen the November 26 order; and the
superior court certainly showed no sign that it recalled having
signed such an order.2
To recap, then, as matters stood on December 22, 2003,
the superior court had just entered three orders two dealing
with child support and one concerning Dash Express: (1) The
December 22 order concerning child support, entered on-record at
the contempt hearing, directing Rodney to produce supplemental
financial information so that the court could establish his child
support obligation based on his actual earnings; (2) the
November 26 child support order proposed ten months before by
CSED and distributed on December 19 which, as of December 22,
apparently remained undiscovered by the parties and unknown to
the court; and (3) the December 22 order, not yet distributed,
requiring Dash Express funds held by the court to be paid out to
the IRS. These three orders soon triggered two motions for
reconsideration, unleashing a flurry of overlapping pleadings and
orders, which in turn ended two months later in the order that
produced this appeal.
C. Disputed Rulings on Reconsideration
Shortly after the December 22 contempt hearing Tamara
apparently received the November 26 child support order. She
moved for reconsideration on December 31, 2003, asking the court
to vacate that order because it used estimated income instead of
actual income, as the court had required. Tamara pointed out
that the court itself had effectively rejected the same order in
April 2003, when it chose to require the parties to file
additional information to establish their actual incomes. She
alternatively argued that the court had implicitly overruled the
November 26 child support order at the December 22 contempt
hearing by renewing its earlier order requiring Rodney to submit
information establishing his actual earnings. Besides asking the
court to vacate its November 26 child support order, Tamaras
motion for reconsideration asked the court to enter a new support
order based on Rodneys actual income as disclosed by the records
he had recently turned over to Tamara. Tamara supported this
request by submitting a new child support affidavit and a
proposed child support order incorporating Rodneys new
information.
On January 5, 2004, Tamara filed her second motion for
reconsideration, this time asking the court to vacate its
December 22 order directing that the Dash Express funds be
disbursed from the courts registry to the IRS. Tamara insisted
that she had sought to claim some of these funds when she
deposited them in the registry two years before the IRS filed its
levy. Thus, Tamara complained, the courts order unfairly gave
the IRS priority over claims that she and other creditors had
tried to make first. Under Alaska law, Tamara argued, the court
should have made the funds available to all Dash Express
creditors with legitimate claims not just the one creditor that
levied them first.
Also on January 5, the superior court issued an order
addressing Tamaras first motion for reconsideration the motion
asking the court to vacate its November 26 child support order.
The January 5 order stated that Tamaras motion for
reconsideration was granted, and directed Rodney to file an
opposition to the motion by January 17. By granting
reconsideration and directing Rodney to respond to the motion,
the order effectively declared that the trial court intended to
reexamine its November 26 order on the merits not that the court
actually had granted Tamaras requested relief.
On January 14, three days before his response would
fall due, Rodney moved for an extension of time until February 6
to respond to pending paperwork. Although the divorce case was
pending before the superior court in Kenai, Rodneys attorney
mistakenly filed the motion with the superior court in Anchorage,
where his law office was located. The court system in Anchorage
forwarded the document to Kenai several days later, and the Kenai
court staff received it on January 20, three days after the
deadline for Rodneys response.
That same day, the superior court judge handling the
case in Kenai, evidently unaware of Rodneys motion to extend the
time for opposition, signed an order granting Tamaras (apparently
unopposed) motion to reconsider and vacate its November 26 child
support order; at the same time, the court approved Tamaras
request to enter her newly proposed child support order, which
relied on the parties actual 2001-2002 earnings.3
On January 28, 2004, the court granted Tamaras motion
to reconsider its Dash Express order as well, thus reopening the
issue of whether the companys funds should go exclusively to the
IRS. The court directed Tamara to inform all Dash Express
creditors of its order and to invite them to file claims against
the funds in the courts registry, together with statements
indicating what priority they believed their claims should
receive.
By February 2, Rodneys originally misfiled January 14
motion for extension had threaded its way through the court
system and captured the assigned judges attention; the court
belatedly granted the motion. This extension gave Rodney until
February 6 to file responses on any pending matters that he
desired to address when he filed the motion on January 14.
On the February 6 deadline for responding, Rodney filed
an emergency motion for additional time. Asserting that the
orders on reconsideration relating to child support and Dash
Express should be vacated, Rodney asked for another extension to
address these issues until February 20. Instead of deciding
Rodneys motion immediately as an emergency matter, the court
allowed the usual time for a response before taking the matter
under advisement. Rodney submitted no response by his requested
February 20 deadline, and failed to request any additional
extension. After another week passed with no further pleadings
from Rodney, the court entered an order on February 27 denying
his motion for an extension from February 6 to February 20.
Until the superior court issued its February 27 order
denying Rodneys last request for an extension, earlier orders
granting Tamaras motions to reconsider the November 26 child
support order and the December Dash Express order had been
functionally suspended pending consideration of Rodneys
responses; in effect, then, the February 27 order denying any
further extension reinstated and confirmed the courts orders on
reconsideration. Rodney now appeals, challenging the Dash
Express order, which reopens the issue of who should receive the
Dash Express funds, and seeking to vacate the new support order,
which adopts Tamaras support calculations reflecting the parties
actual earnings. We consider each of these points in turn.
III. DISCUSSION
A. Dash Express
Rodney argues that we should vacate the order on
reconsideration concerning the Dash Express funds and reinstate
the superior courts December 22, 2003, order disbursing those
funds to the IRS. He maintains that the superior court erred by
neglecting to allow him to respond to Tamaras motion to
reconsider the December 22 order and by failing to explain its
basis for reconsidering its original order directing the funds to
be paid to the IRS.
Tamara responds initially that these issues are not
ripe for appeal. Only final judgments can be appealed as of
right, she points out.4 Because the superior courts
reconsideration order concerning the Dash Express funds calls for
further proceedings to determine who should receive the companys
money, Tamara contends that the order cannot properly be treated
as an appealable final judgment.
Tamaras argument is well taken.5 A final judgment is
one that disposes of the entire case and ends the litigation on
the merits.6 Here, far from deciding who should obtain the
deposited Dash Express funds, the order on reconsideration
reopened that issue and specifically required further
proceedings. As Rodney himself acknowledges, [i]t is uncertain
whether the effect of the granting of Tamaras motion for
reconsideration vacated the previous order or merely stayed its
application pending possible further proceedings. It seems more
likely that the latter effect was intended by the courts order.
Rodney further concedes that [t]he matter remains unresolved and
at this writing the funds are still in the court registry.
Rodney nonetheless contends that the Dash Express issue
needs to be aired immediately because, he asserts, Tamara has
ignored the trial courts order directing her to notify other Dash
Express creditors of the order so that they can submit claims.
Since no other creditors have filed claims, Rodney alleges, no
hearing on the matter will ever be held, so the disputed order
will never become a final appealable judgment. According to
Rodney, Tamara should not be allowed to profit from her own lack
of compliance by defeating his right to appellate review.
But this argument is unpersuasive. If, as Rodney
alleges, Tamara is flouting the superior courts notification
order, then the proper recourse would be for Rodney to ask the
superior court to enforce its order by compelling Tamara to obey
it. Tamaras alleged disobedience does not entitle Rodney to
abandon available trial court remedies and jump courts by
demanding review of an otherwise non-appealable order.
Since Rodneys claims of error concerning Dash Express
address a matter that has not been finally resolved by the
superior court, we conclude that no final judgment has been
entered, so Rodneys appeal on this point must be dismissed as
premature.
B. Child Support
Rodney also challenges the superior courts decision to
reconsider its November 26, 2003, child support order. He argues
that the court should not have reconsidered the order without
first allowing him to file an opposition to Tamaras motion for
reconsideration; he also argues that the court improperly relied
on new evidence in adopting the new child support order and did
not adequately explain its reasoning. But as Tamara correctly
responds, Rodneys arguments lack merit.7
As already noted above, because the superior court was
actively seeking to enforce its order requiring Rodney to submit
information to establish a child support order based on his
actual earnings, it appears to have made an oversight in signing
its November 26 child support order, which used CSEDs estimated
income calculations. Moreover, even though the courts January 5
order nominally granted Tamaras motion to reconsider its
November 26 child support order, the order on reconsideration did
not, as Rodney alleges, deprive him of an opportunity to respond
to Tamaras motion. To the contrary, the January 5 order
expressly invited Rodney to respond to Tamaras motion, thus
effectively indicating that the trial court intended to reexamine
its November 26 order not that it had actually vacated that
order as Tamara requested.
This reading of the trial courts order follows
logically because the order substantially tracked the
requirements of Civil Rule 77(k)(3), which specifies that the
trial court should ordinarily invite a response before granting a
motion for reconsideration: No response shall be made to a motion
for reconsideration unless requested by the court, but a motion
for reconsideration will ordinarily not be granted in the absence
of such a request.8 When viewed in context, the superior courts
January 5 order can most reasonably be understood as an attempt
to comply with this rules command.
Rodney also argues that the trial court improperly
considered new evidence in granting Tamaras request to substitute
her proposed child support order for the November 26 order. But
this argument lacks merit for a similar reason: By expressly
inviting Rodney to respond to Tamaras motion for reconsideration,
and then extending the deadline for his response, the superior
court gave Rodney ample opportunity to controvert the new
information Tamara submitted to bolster her newly proposed child
support order. And although the court ultimately denied Rodneys
motion for yet another extension, it did so only after his
requested extended deadline had passed without any response or
further request for extension. Nor did Rodney move for
reconsideration or offer to file a late response after the court
denied his last extension. Even now, on appeal, Rodney advances
no plausible explanation for his failure to submit a response by
his own requested February 20 deadline.9
Rodney further asserts that the superior court failed
to enter proper findings and conclusions explaining its reasons
for granting Tamaras proposed child support order. But this
argument is simply mistaken. The child support order itself
amply explains the basis of the trial courts decision: the order
follows Alaskas standard form DR-301 Order for Modification of
Child Support, providing the detailed information that DR-301
requires and performing all necessary calculations on the basis
of that information, in keeping with the requirements of Civil
Rule 90.3. In turn, the amounts reflected in the order
correspond to the detailed affidavits submitted by Tamara, which
reflect the financial information that Rodney gave Tamara at or
soon after the December 22 contempt hearing. Rodney does not
challenge the accuracy of the information used by the court. Nor
does he allege that the courts order contains errors in
calculation. When viewed as a whole, then, these documents fully
explain the superior courts child support order.
Moreover, even assuming that Rodney did show that the
trial court committed procedural error, the error would be
harmless at most. The only claim of prejudice advanced on appeal
by Rodney is that the superior court should have imputed income
to Tamara because she became voluntarily unemployed during the
period in question by taking maternity leave to have a new child
with her current spouse. But Rodneys argument misreads Rule
90.3(a)(4). The rule allows income to be imputed only when a
parent voluntarily and unreasonably is unemployed or
underemployed.10 Here, Rodneys argument completely ignores the
requirement of unreasonableness. Rodney relies solely on the
contention that Tamara voluntarily took maternity leave,
providing no further reason and citing no authority suggesting
that her temporary time off to have a child should automatically
result in imputed income. On this record, we see no basis for
concluding that the trial courts ruling substantially prejudiced
Rodney.
IV. CONCLUSION
Because the order Rodney challenges on the Dash Express
issue is not a final judgment, we DISMISS Rodneys appeal on that
point. Because we find no reversible error in connection with
the superior courts orders granting Tamaras motion to reconsider
the November 26 child support order and to enter a different
order, we AFFIRM those orders.
_______________________________
1 Rodney also filed a child support affidavit but
supported it with only a single pay stub, which simply reflected
his 2002 wages from his primary employer.
2 If the court had recalled the order and had
deliberately issued it, then the court would have had no reason
to proceed with the show-cause hearing or to require Rodney to
produce additional information concerning his actual 2001-2002
income.
3 On February 9, 2004, CSED filed a Notice of Adjustment
reflecting Rodneys increased support obligation under the newly
entered child support order.
4 D.L.M. v. M.W., 941 P.2d 900, 902 (Alaska 1997) (citing
Appellate Rule 202(a)).
5 The appealability of an order presents a jurisdictional
question that we review de novo. See Greater Anchorage Area
Borough v. City of Anchorage, 504 P.2d 1027, 1030 (Alaska 1972),
overruled on other grounds by City & Borough of Juneau v.
Thibodeau, 595 P.2d 626, 628-29 (Alaska 1979).
6 D.L.M., 941 P.2d at 902 (quoting Borg-Warner Corp. v.
Avco Corp., 850 P.2d 628, 634 (Alaska 1993) (citations omitted)).
7 In addition to responding to Rodneys arguments on their
merits, Tamara contends as an initial matter that Rodneys appeal
on this point should be dismissed because he filed it too late.
The final order denying Rodneys extension to file responses to
Tamaras motions for reconsideration was issued February 27, 2004,
and was distributed on March 3. As noted in our discussion in
the text of this opinion, this order functionally resolved all
pending child support issues and amounted to a final judgment;
hence the thirty-day period for appeal began running when the
order was distributed. See Alaska R. App. P. 204(a)(1). Because
Rodney filed his notice of appeal on April 7, the notice was
filed several days after the specified deadline. But given the
brief period of delay, the general confusion surrounding the
proceedings on reconsideration, the uncertainty that might have
arisen because the order denying Rodneys extension was not
expressly identified as a final judgment, and the lack of any
discernible prejudice to Tamara, we conclude that dismissing
Rodneys appeal might result in manifest injustice, and therefore
choose to relax the deadline and address the appeal on its
merits. See Alaska R. App. P. 521.
8 Alaska R. Civ. P. 77(k)(3).
9 Rodney does assert on appeal that procedural confusion
and misunderstandings with his attorney accounted for his
inability to comply with earlier deadlines; but he does not claim
that these same difficulties prevented him from meeting his
requested February 20 deadline or excused him from at least
asking for another extension by that date. To the extent that
Rodneys briefing might suggest that it would have been futile to
file a response or seek another extension on or after his
requested February 20 deadline, his suggestion lacks any
discernible basis in the record; as of February 20, Rodneys
motion for extension was still under advisement, and we see
nothing in the record suggesting that the trial court would
inevitably have denied the motion had Rodney submitted a response
by that day. Nor do we see any reason to assume that the court
would necessarily have denied a timely motion for a further
extension if the motion were supported by a showing of good
cause. Because the superior court waited until February 27 to
deny Rodneys motion to extend the response time until
February 20, and because Rodney had filed nothing further by
then, its order of denial suggests that the court simply
considered the motion to be moot.
10 Alaska R. Civ. P. 90.3(a)(4) (emphasis added). See,
e.g., Silvan v. Alcina, 105 P.3d 117, 119-20, 125 (Alaska 2005)
(upholding a finding by the superior court that Silvan was
voluntarily and unreasonably unemployed and that income should be
imputed to her, which in turn reduced the child support due her);
Beaudoin v. Beaudoin, 24 P.3d 523, 530 (Alaska 2001); Alaska R.
Civ. P. 90.3 cmt. III.C. Cf. Thomas v. Thomas, 589 A.2d 1372,
1373 (N.J. Super. Ch. Div. 1991) (noting that acting as a care
giver to two young children is a form of employment, even if it
is not compensated monetarily).
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