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Groenstein v. Groenstein1/19/2005
rt did not abuse its discretion in making its custody determination. In cases such as this where it is apparent that both parents love and care for their child and are fit and competent to have custody, the custody determination is difficult and demanding. See Pahl, . Nevertheless, a custody determination must be made, and the district court has wide discretion in making it. In this instance, the district court did not abuse that discretion.
Child Support
[ ] Father claims three errors in the district court's calculation of child support. The first is that the district court failed to consider the dependent payments the child was receiving from the Social Security Administration for Father's disability. Father asserts that those amounts should be used to offset his support obligation. Second, Father claims that the district court erred in imputing income based on the statutory rate for unsatisfied judgments. He argues that this was not a realistic amount to impute given that his investments were earning much less than that amount. Third, Father claims that the district court erred in the amount of income that it imputed to Mother. He maintains that, based on her education, the district court should have imputed a higher income to Mother. We will consider the arguments in turn.
[ ] This court has addressed dependent social security benefits in the child support setting before. In Hinckley v. Hinckley, 812 P.2d 907 (Wyo. 1991), we considered a case where the children began receiving social security benefits because their father was granted social security disability after a divorce. When discussing the issue of that case we noted: "The question is whether we should allow the obligor to unilaterally apply Social Security benefits that are received by his children to fulfill his obligation." Id., at 911. After acknowledging that a number of courts allowed a credit to the non-custodial parent for social security benefits paid to the children, we adopted the rule that "the receipt of payments from Social Security by the children of one obligated to pay child support may constitute a change of circumstances giving rise to justification for a petition for modification of the decree." Id. at 911. We then held that those benefits are one factor to be considered by the district court in determining whether a material change of circumstances has occurred, but that other changes must also be considered. Id. The primary message of our decision, however, was that the obligor must petition the court for modification instead of unilaterally reducing his payment.
Id. at 912
[ ] Importantly for our purposes today, in Hinkley we recognized that when determining child support, a court must consider social security benefits received by the child as a factor. Id. at 912. However, we did not dictate how a district court must account for these payments and seemed to largely leave it as a matter of district court discretion. Likewise, we did not directly address what to do with these dependency benefits in an initial support determination because in Hinkley we were addressing a party seeking modification of an existing order.
[ ] Next, in Wood v. Wood, 964 P.2d 1259 (Wyo. 1998), we found that the district court was correct in not including social security benefits paid for the benefit of the children in the support calculation. In Wood the mother had two daughters from a previous marriage. The daughters were eligible for, and the wife received on their behalf, monthly social security benefits because their biological father had passed away. Id. at 1263. The mother's second husband adopted the girls, and the couple also had two more children. When the parties divorced
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