Alma Neiswinter v. Mark Murray

This appeal involves modification of child custody and child support, and contempt for failure to pay the support. When the mother and the father were divorced, the mother was designated as the primary residential parent. Three years later, custody was changed to the father. Subsequently, the mother filed a petition for change of custody and for modification of her child support obligation. The State later filed a petition on behalf of the father to hold the mother in criminal contempt for failure to pay child support. After a trial on both the mother's petition for change in custody and support and the State's petition for contempt, the trial court denied the mother's petition for custody, reduced the support retroactively because one child no longer lived with the father, and granted the State's petition, holding the mother in contempt. As punishment for the contempt, the trial court sentenced the mother to forty days in prison. From that order, the mother now appeals. We affirm the trial court's determinations regarding child custody and child support. We reverse the trial court's finding of criminal contempt, finding that the mother had in fact paid all of the required child support, based on the trial court's retroactive order reducing the child support obligation.