## Facts

- Former husband and former wife divorced under a marital settlement agreement requiring the husband to pay $550 per month in child support and 100% of the child’s uninsured medical expenses.
- Both parties later remarried; the husband had three additional children in his second marriage.
- The husband petitioned to modify and reduce his existing child-support obligation, alleging a substantial change in circumstances based on decreased income, remarriage and additional children, and the former wife’s remarriage.
- The trial court denied the requested modification and rejected the husband’s constitutional challenge to Florida’s child-support guidelines limiting consideration of “subsequent children.”
- The husband appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether Florida’s child-support guidelines violate equal protection by permitting “subsequent children” to be considered in upward modifications but not as a basis for downward modification of an existing award.
2. Whether the husband established a substantial, material, involuntary, and permanent change in circumstances sufficient to reduce child support.

## Decision

- Affirmed.
- The guideline restriction on using “subsequent children” to justify a downward modification survived rational-basis review and did not violate equal protection.
- The husband failed to carry his burden to prove a substantial change in circumstances because he did not show a permanent, involuntary, and substantial decrease in income or other qualifying change warranting reduction.

## Legal Principles

- Equal-protection challenges to economic and domestic-relations legislation that do not involve a suspect class or fundamental right are reviewed under rational-basis scrutiny and are upheld if rationally related to a legitimate state interest.
- A legitimate state interest supports ensuring continued financial support for children from a first marriage despite a parent’s later decision to assume additional support obligations in a subsequent family.
- Florida child support may be modified only upon proof of a substantial change in circumstances that is material, involuntary, and permanent (or sufficiently enduring), and the moving party bears the burden of proof.
- Voluntary life choices, including remarriage and having additional children, generally do not justify reducing an existing support obligation to a prior child absent the required showing of qualifying changed circumstances.

## Conclusion

The appellate court upheld Florida’s guideline treatment of subsequent children under rational-basis review and affirmed denial of the former husband’s request to reduce child support because he did not prove the requisite substantial, involuntary, and permanent change in circumstances.


Pohlmann v. Pohlmann, 703 So. 2d 1121 (Fla. 5th DCA 1997)