Background
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services brought a parentage action on behalf of Shona L. Williams concerning her child with Samuel R. Lee, II. After an earlier support order was vacated, the circuit court held a hearing to determine the parties’ incomes, Lee’s annual parenting-time overnights, and his responsibility for birth-related medical expenses.
The parties’ allocation judgment gave Lee regular parenting time, four weeks of vacation, and alternating holiday time. The circuit court counted 130 annual overnights based only on the regular schedule, excluding vacation and holiday overnights because they varied from year to year. It set prospective child support at $1,037.12 per month and ordered Lee to reimburse Williams $5,957.55 for medical expenses.
The Court’s Holding
The appellate court held that the circuit court abused its discretion by categorically excluding vacation and holiday overnights. Section 505(a)(3.8) of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act does not restrict the types of overnights considered when deciding whether a parent reaches the 146-overnight threshold for shared physical care. The circuit court also incorrectly found that the parties had equal vacation time, although the judgment awarded Williams two weeks and Lee four weeks. The appellate court remanded for recalculation without deciding whether Lee ultimately qualifies for the shared-care formula.
The court affirmed the income calculations because Lee failed to challenge the treatment of the parties’ retroactive payments until his motion to reconsider and therefore waived the issue. It vacated the medical-expense award because the record supported only approximately $4,929 in total out-of-pocket expenses, not the $9,929.25 used by the circuit court, and remanded for a new allocation. The disposition was affirmed in part, reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded.
Key Takeaways
- Vacation and holiday overnights cannot be categorically excluded when applying Illinois’s 146-overnight shared-physical-care threshold.
- The appellate court did not determine that Lee met the threshold; the circuit court must reconsider the relevant overnights on remand.
- An expense-reimbursement award must have an evidentiary basis, and an argument first raised in a motion to reconsider may be waived.
Why It Matters
The order clarifies that all qualifying overnights—including vacation and holiday time—must be considered when determining whether the shared-care child-support formula applies. Because the decision was issued under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23, it is nonprecedential except in the limited circumstances permitted by Rule 23(e)(1).
The case also illustrates the risks of deficient appellate briefing. Although the majority reached the merits, it identified multiple rule violations and a nonexistent citation apparently fabricated or generated through unverified artificial-intelligence use. Justice Holdridge dissented and would have struck Lee’s brief and dismissed the appeal.