One of the worst habits I picked up as a CSE trench-fighter for YoungWilliams came from the senior attorney in the office where I started. A victim of the State of Kansas's rebranding the Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services as "the Department for Children and Families", he took to poking fun at it and referred to DCF as "the Department of Cute and Fuzzy".
It took me a while to figure out why I liked that, until it clicked: The Powers That Be at DCF tend to ask their field attorneys to advance logic and arguments that can, charitably, be characterized as such. Right up until the moment that an appellate court comes along and does this.
Which brings us to the inaugural edition of The Department for Cute and Fuzzy Watch, Hohmann v. Hohmann, a case handed down by the Kansas Supreme Court on May 20, 2013. (Upon further thought, "handed down" is probably the wrong term. The Supreme Court issued its decision to justify not hearing the case.) Before going any further, can we just marvel at that caption for a minute? It's like a thread name straight out of the bowels of the Atomic Rockets forums! ...I'm not the only person who immediately went to orbital mechanics, right? Right?
Hohmann actually focuses on a very narrow point of law: Whether, under existing precedent, Social Security Disability lump sum payments for the benefit of a child can be credited against child support arrearages which arose for the months the lump sum covers. (Disclosure: I became familiar with Hohmann's existence when I was given my marching orders in a case at the trial court-level involving the same issue.) Under existing precedent, a noncustodial parent is entitled to a credit against his monthly child support obligation if the child is receiving a monthly monetary benefit from the Social Security Administration for that parent's disability, up to the amount of the monthly child support obligation. See Andler v. Andler, 538 P.2d 649 (Kan. 1975). Any amount beyond the monthly support obligation is considered a gift and, therefore, cannot be used to pay back support. In re Williams, 900 P.2d 860 (Kan. App. 1995).
DCF, naturally enough, chose to argue that under Williams, the entirety of the lump sum should be applied to the single month of support in which the lump sum was received. And, therefore, any excess above and beyond that monthly support should be considered a gift. Why this argument is worth spotlighting is that SSD lump sums are composed of the sum of the monthly SSD payments that the SSD applicant would have received between the date of application and the present, but for the wheels of bureaucracy churning. I'll let you read the opinion of the Supreme Court, but suffice it to say they did not find that argument nearly as cute as the Powers That Be at DCF's headquarters did.
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