We granted the application for discretionary review filed by appellant Angel Draughn hereinafter “Mother” from the trial court’s February 2010 order terminating the child-support obligation of appellee Clifford Draughn hereinafter “Father” with regard to the 18-year-old son of the parties for whom Father had agreed to pay monthly support until the child “reaches the age of eighteen . . .; provided that if the child becomes eighteen years old while enrolled in and attending a secondary school on a full time basis, then the child support shall continue for said child until he has graduated from secondary school or reaches the age of twenty, whichever comes first.” The child turned eighteen on April 21, 2009. The February 22, 2010 order was entered simultaneously in two actions, one initiated by Father’s petition for declaratory judgment and the other initiated by Mother’s petition for a finding of contempt. In its order terminating the child support obligation, the trial court saw the determinative question as being whether the child was “actually attending school” following his eighteenth birthday. The trial court found that, in February 2009, the child had stopped attending the private high school in which he was enrolled and, with the agreement of his private school, had enrolled in an online high-school program with the assurance he would graduate as a student of his private high school upon completion of the online coursework. However, the child did not complete the coursework and did not graduate from the private high school. In its order, the trial court stated it “does not find that an online class satisfies the requirement of ‘attend’ as per the agreed-upon language in the child support modification clause. . . .” However, the trial court did not enter a judgment based on that finding. Instead, the trial court went on to assume, for the sake of argument, that “virtual attendance” in an online class could satisfy the prerequisite that the child be “attending” school, and found that the child failed to attend school on a full-time basis after June 9, 2009, and that Mother had failed to carry her burden of presenting “a possible defense” to the child’s failure to attend school full time after June 9. As a result, the trial court found that the child abandoned his status as a full-time student enrolled in and attending a secondary school on June 9. Based on these findings, the trial court terminated Father’s child-support obligation as of July 1 and found him in contempt for his failure to pay child support for May and June 2009. In granting the application to review the trial court’s order, we expressed interest in whether a child’s enrollment in an on-line class may satisfy the requirement of “attending” school and whether, under the terms of the child-support modification order, the trial court was required to determine whether the child was enrolled in and attending full time a secondary school as of the date of the child’s eighteenth birthday.
1. The trial court initially found that the child’s enrollment in online courses did not satisfy the modification order’s requirement that the child “attend” school in order to have Father pay child support beyond the child’s attainment of majority. While the trial court did not base its judgment on this finding,1 we asked the parties to address the correctness of the trial court’s statement.
