J.B. v. C.B., 238 Conn.App. 664 (2026) (recurring gifts not likely to continue; psychologist as fact witness)
Officially released: April 28, 2026
In Short: (1) The trial court acted within its discretion in excluding monthly gifts from Father’s parents from income for child support purposes; the exclusion was implicit and unexplained, and, absent any request for articulation, the Appellate Court presumed that the trial court credited Father’s testimony that the payments were not likely to continue. (2) The court-ordered reunification therapist, a licensed psychologist, was properly permitted to testify as a fact witness regarding his dealings with the parties and efforts to schedule sessions; expert opinion testimony, including as to parental alienation and custody, was precluded as irrelevant to the only motion pending, a motion for contempt.
The parties were divorced in April 2023 after a contentious trial. After the close of the dissolution trial, but before the court rendered its decision, Father filed a pendente lite motion for contempt alleging Mother was in violation of a December 22, 2022 pendente lite order requiring the parties to engage in reunification therapy with Dr. Bruce Freedman. The dissolution court did not directly rule on that motion, but the Judgment incorporated the December 22, 2022 order by reference and included additional orders regarding Mother’s obligations to facilitate the reunification efforts.
Judge Nguyen-O’Dowd awarded the parties joint legal custody of their minor children, ages four and six, with primary residence to Mother. Father would be permitted to file a motion to modify and to request access after completing the court-ordered reunification therapy and Mother was ordered to facilitate such therapy efforts. Among other orders, Father was ordered to pay $225/week in child support and $40/week toward a pendente lite arrearage of $9,902. Mother would retain the marital home and be solely responsible for its costs. Neither party appealed the Judgment.
Post-judgment litigation promptly commenced. Father moved for a downward modification of child support on the basis of lost employment and for contempt regarding Mother’s obligations respecting the marital home, the mortgage on which had gone into foreclosure. Mother filed two motions for contempt, asserting Father’s noncompliance with the financial orders and, in the second, violations of the automatic orders that she claimed to have discovered post-judgment. Following an interim hearing, Judge Klau temporarily reduced child support to $160/week and suspended the arrearage payments.
After several days of hearings concluding in early January 2024, Judge Chadwick denied Father’s motion for contempt, granted the downward modification upon finding a substantial change in circumstances, ordered Father to pay $183/week in child support plus $37/week toward the arrearage, and marked off Mother’s motion for contempt. Mother’s motion to reargue/reconsider was denied, and she appealed, self-represented. Father did not participate in the appeal. The Appellate Court set forth the abuse of discretion and clearly erroneous standard of review.
The Appellate Court addressed Mother’s claim that, in modifying child support downward, the trial court improperly relied on incomplete or inaccurate financial disclosures by Father, alleging that Father failed to properly account for gifts including monthly payments from his parents.
Father had listed $1,500/month from his parents on his financial affidavit, although he did not include them in calculating his total gross income. The trial court (Judge Klau) had included those gifts as income in an interim order, raising the issue sua sponte over Father’s objection, but explicitly without prejudice. The trial court (Judge Chadwick) did not include the gifts in entering a final order on the modification.
The Appellate Court noted the requirements of financial affidavits under Practice Book § 25-30 and the importance of full and honest disclosure, citing Reinke v. Sing, 186 Conn.App. 665, 676 (2018). It noted that § 46b-215a-1(11)(A)(xxi) of the Child Support and Arrearage Guidelines (Regs., Conn. State Agencies) requires that, in reporting gross income, parties include, with limited exceptions not relevant here, any “regularly recurring gifts ….” The Appellate Court found that Father had fully disclosed the payments on his financial affidavit, that Mother had a full and fair opportunity to contest his disclosures at the hearing, and that nothing in the record showed that the downward modification rested on incomplete or inaccurate disclosures.
Notably, Judge Chadwick never expressly ruled on the gift issue. The memorandum of decision did not address the parents’ payments; the court simply utilized Father’s guidelines worksheet, which omitted them. Mother never sought an articulation. The Appellate Court declined to treat that silence as error, observing that Judge Chadwick was not bound by Judge Klau’s interim ruling and that “[t]he court did not explain the reasoning behind its implicit ruling, nor was it asked to do so by the defendant.” Rather, “because we must allow every reasonable presumption in favor of the correctness of the trial court’s action, it is reasonable to infer that the court credited the plaintiff’s testimony that the payments were not likely to continue indefinitely.” Citing Havis-Carbone v. Carbone, 155 Conn.App. 848, 867 (2015), the Appellate Court presumed that the trial court knew and correctly applied the law and placed the burden on Mother, as the appellant, to show otherwise. The lesson for the practitioner: where a ruling is implicit and unexplained, the appellant who does not seek an articulation (Practice Book § 66-5) leaves the silence to be construed in favor of the judgment. Compare Levine v. Levine, 238 Conn.App. 653 (2026), released the same day, in which the failure to seek an articulation likewise foreclosed review.
The Appellate Court addressed Mother’s claim that the trial court improperly admitted unqualified expert testimony of Bruce Freedman, a licensed psychologist and the court-ordered reunification therapist. The Appellate Court found that the trial court had heard Mother’s motion in limine, which had sought to preclude any testimony from Freedman “in any capacity, be it layperson, fact witness or expert.” The trial court denied the motion but limited Freedman to fact testimony, his observations, his dealings with the parties, and the efforts to schedule sessions, as bearing on compliance with the reunification orders, and precluded expert or opinion testimony on parental alienation and custody because “his expert opinions are not relevant to the pending motion.” The trial court enforced that line during the hearing, sustaining objections to testimony that strayed beyond it, including twice when Mother herself attempted to elicit an expert opinion from Freedman on cross-examination. The Appellate Court, having reviewed the transcript, was unconvinced that the record supported Mother’s premise that improper or unqualified expert testimony had been admitted, and found no error.
The Appellate Court dispensed with Mother’s remaining claims summarily. Her challenges to two fee waiver rulings were dismissed outright: the sole avenue for review of an order on a fee waiver application is a motion for review under Practice Book §§ 63-6 and 66-6 or, for the waiver sought in connection with Mother’s ex parte application for emergency custody orders, a petition for review under C.G.S. § 52-259b(d) and Practice Book § 78b-1, not a direct appeal.
Mother’s claim that the trial court ignored evidence of Father’s misconduct misapprehended the record: the trial court did not deny her motion for contempt but marked it off, with her consent, because she could not identify a clear and unambiguous order that Father had violated, and it explained that the relief she sought required a motion to open and modify the Judgment rather than a motion for contempt.
Her remaining claims, that the modification failed to account for the parties’ prior litigation and its financial burden, that selective and inconsistent evidentiary rulings violated due process, and that the trial court failed to maintain judicial neutrality, foundered on inadequate briefing or an inadequate record, the Appellate Court declining to permit Mother to “dress up ordinary evidentiary issues in constitutional garb.” Nor was Mother deprived of closing argument: the trial court permitted her closing to continue over two hearing dates and stopped her only when she attempted to introduce new evidence after the evidentiary record had closed. Oral argument on motions, and reasonable limits on its scope and duration, are matters of discretion. Practice Book § 11-18(a).
The appeal was dismissed as to the fee waiver claims; the Judgment was otherwise affirmed.
Photo by Kirtan Nakrani on Unsplash
