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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE

FILED
STATE OF TENNESSEE o/b/o CAROL A. VAUGHN, Plaintiff/Appellee, VS. PETER KAATRUDE, Defendant/Appellant. ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )
February 1, 2000 Cecil Crowson, Jr. Appellate Court Clerk

Montgomery Juvenile No. 77-129 Appeal No. M1997-00146-COA-R3-CV

APPEAL FROM THE JUVENILE COURT FOR MONTGOMERY COUNTY AT CLARKSVILLE, TENNESSEE THE HONORABLE CHARLES E. BUSH, JUDGE

For Plaintiff/Appellee: Paul G. Summers Attorney General and Reporter Douglas Earl Dimond Assistant Attorney General

For Defendant/Appellant: Gregory D. Smith Clarksville, Tennessee

AFFIRMED IN PART; VACATED IN PART; AND REMANDED

WILLIAM C. KOCH, JR., JUDGE

OPINION
This appeal involves a father's obligation to pay support for a non-marital child. Fifteen years after the child's birth, the Tennessee Department of Human Services, acting on behalf of the child's mother, filed suit in the M ontgomery County Juvenile C ourt seekin g to establish paternity and to obtain past and future support from the father. Following a bench trial, the trial court entered an order establishing paternity and ordering the father to pay $542.50 per mon th in child support. The juvenile court also awarded the mother $50,000 in back child support. The father now takes issue with the amount of the award for back child support. We have concluded that the evidence does not support the amount of the award for back c hild sup port an d acco rdingly reman d the ca se for fu rther pro ceedin gs. I. The brief liaison between Carol Vaughn and Pe ter Kaatrud e came to an end in October 1980. Ms. Vaughn learned that she was pregnant several months later. While the parties' accounts differ concerning the events immediately following this discovery,1 there is no dispute that Ms. Vaughn gave birth to a son on August 7, 1981. On advice of c ounsel, Ms. Vaughn did not list Mr. Kaatrude as the child's father on the birth certificate and had no contact of any sort with Mr. Kaatrude after the child's birth.2 Ms. Vaughn undertook to raise the child without any assistance from M r. Kaatrude, and thus Mr. K aatrude pla yed no ro le in the boy 's life. Mr. K aatrude co mpleted his undergra duate education in Nash ville and in 1982 obtaine d a graduate degree in library science. After working in Nashville for several years, Mr. Kaatrude became an assistant librarian at Louisiana State University. In 1992, after stints at UCLA's Graduate School of Management and Nicholls State University, M r. Kaatrude becam e the Dean of L ibrary Servic es at La mar U niversity in Port A rthur, T exas. In 1992, perhaps as a result of seeking AFDC benefits from the Tennessee Department of Human Services, Ms. Vaughn learned that she had a legal right to seek child support from her son's father. By that time, she had lost track of Mr. Kaatrude even though she had apparently maintained some sort of contact over with years with his father. Nevertheless, Ms. Vaugh n still made n o effort to seek support from Mr. Kaatrude. However, in March 1996, the Office of Child Su pport of the Depa rtment of Hum an Services learned o f Mr. Kaatrude's whereabouts from his father who resided in N ashville. Arm ed with this information, the Departmen t filed a petition in the Montgom ery County Juv enile Court seeking an adjudic ation of M r. Kaatrude 's paternity as well as past and future c hild suppo rt. Ms. Vaughn asserts that she discussed her pregnancy with Mr. Kaatrude and that he suggested that she have an abortion. Mr. Kaatrude disputes that this conversation ever occurred and insists that he would never have proposed an abortion because he opposes abortion for "religious and personal reasons." Ms. Vaughn stated that she had been advised that distancing herself and the child from Mr. Kaatrude would enhance the prospects of the child's adoption should she later marry.
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Mr. Kaatrude did not agree initially that he was the child's father because he and Ms. Vaughn had engaged in protected sex and because the child's birth occurred more than nine months after he and Ms. Vaughn broke up. When the court-ordered blood tests confirmed that he was th e father, M r. Kaatrude informed the Depa rtment that h e was willing to pay child support prospectively but that it would be unreasonable to requ ire him to pa y back ch ild support because of both Ms. Vaughn's delay in demanding support and her purposeful decision to raise the child without his assistance. Following a hearing, the juvenile court found that Mr. K aatrude was the ch ild's father and directed him to begin paying $542.50 per month in child support. In addition, the trial court awarded Ms. Vaughn $50,000 for back child support from Aug ust 1981 to January 1997 but permitted Mr. Kaatrude to pay this portion of the judgment in installments of $100 per month.3 The juvenile court also d etermined that these sup port obligations w ould be paid by wage assignment. Mr. Kaatrude has appealed from the $50,000 award for back child support. II. Biological parents must, as a general matter, support their children until they reach the age of m ajority. See Tenn. C ode An n.

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