Record Insufficient for Father’s ‘Credit’ Claim

Because the appellate record is incomplete, especially in not including guidelines worksheets,  the Court of Appeals affirms the judgment below and will not consider appellant’s claim that the trial court erred in its order governing payment of, and any credit due appellant, for the children’s medical expenses not covered by the high-deductible health care plan.

Here, appellant has not provided the court with the guidelines worksheet supposedly used by the trial court in making its decision in this case. Neither appellant’s proposed guidelines nor the guidelines used by the trial court were provided in the appendix. Appellee filed a designation with additional contents to be included within the appendix, however, appellee did not reference the guideline worksheets, and as a result, they were not added to the appendix.

The record in this case appears to reflect that the trial court was presented with guideline worksheets and calculations from the parties. Also, both parties, and the trial court, spoke extensively about the guideline calculations during the course of the hearing. Without these worksheets, appellant nevertheless asks this court to make a determination based on the trial court’s ruling regarding unreimbursed medical expenses for the children. However, we cannot do so without the crucial information absent from the record. The absence of this information makes the record insufficient to permit us to determine if the trial court erred in its ruling.

Finally, and perhaps most problematic, is that this court has no way of determining from the insufficient record what “credit” appellant requested from the trial court and what “credit” the trial court ultimately provided him with.

Under these circumstances, we cannot make a determination as to whether, as appellant contends, the trial court erred in crediting appellant for pre-tax contributions as the equivalent of premium payments so long as he does not seek reimbursement from appellee unless appellant has fully funded the insurance for the year, or pays medicals up to the level of the annual funding.

Judgment affirmed.

Marraro v. Haaland (Alston) No. 1635-16-4, June 27, 2017; Fairfax Cir.Ct. (Tran) Trevor D. Anderson for appellant; Maureen E. Danker for appellee. VLW 017-7-145(UP), 6 pp.