We granted this application for discretionary appeal under Supreme Court Rule 34 4, by which we grant every “application for leave to appeal a judgment and decree of divorce that is final under OCGA § 5-6-34 a 1 and timely under OCGA § 5-6-35 d and is determined to have possible merit by a majority vote of the Court.” As explained below, the final child support order issued by the trial court includes a specific deviation for extraordinary educational expenses, but the court failed to make the statutorily required written findings necessary to support the deviation. We therefore must reverse the judgment in part and remand the case for a redetermination of the final child support order, with any extraordinary educational expenses deviation to be based on proper written findings. Husband’s remaining challenges lack merit, and so we affirm the remainder of the trial court’s judgment. 1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court’s rulings, the evidence showed as follows. On November 11, 2000, Joshua P. Brogdon Husband and Tawnya S. Brogdon Wife married. They later had a child. On July 9, 2009, Husband filed for divorce. On August 3, 2010, after a two-day bench trial, the court entered a final judgment and decree of divorce. The divorce decree incorporated by reference an attached Child Support Addendum, which incorporated by reference and attached the statutorily required Child Support Worksheet and Child Support Schedule E —Deviation Special Circumstances. See OCGA § 19-6-15 c 4 “The child support worksheet and, if there are any deviations, Schedule E shall be attached to the final court order or judgment . . . .”.
The divorce decree awarded the parties joint legal custody of their five-year-old son, with Wife having primary physical custody. Regarding child support, the trial court rejected Husband’s claims about his sources of income and monthly gross income of $2,916.67, instead finding that he had monthly gross income of $12,000. The court found no reliable evidence of Wife’s income and imputed to her monthly gross income of $1,257. After performing the calculations reflected on the Child Support Worksheet and Schedule E, the court ordered Husband to pay Wife monthly child support of $1,816.
