Pro football player must continue $2,500 per month child support

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jul 1, 2002 by Stacey Winakur

A defensive tackle for the St. Louis Rams must continue to pay $2,500 a month to support his 7-year-old daughter, the Court of Special Appeals held Friday, rejecting Tyoka Jackson's suggestion that the girl should not be treated the same as a child who actually had the experience of living in a wealthy family. "The child of a millionaire ought to have a lifestyle of advantage, and should not be consigned to a meager existence, even if the parents were never married to each other," Judge Ellen L.

Hollander wrote for the court. Jackson, a Maryland native, was signed in 1994 by the Atlanta Falcons as an undrafted free agent after playing college ball at Penn State University. He went on to play one year with the Miami Dolphins and five years with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before signing with St. Louis in 2000. His daughter, Taila LaShay Proctor- Jackson, was born in 1995. Taila's mother, Tarsha LaShay Proctor, filed a petition in Prince George's County Circuit Court for custody and child support in 1997, when Jackson was with Tampa Bay. According to the appeals court's opinion, Jackson's three-year contract with Tampa paid him an average of $710,000 a year. A domestic relations master ordered him to pay temporary child support of $1,750 a month, but he voluntarily paid $2,500 a month to cover Taila's tuition at a Montessori school. The master eventually recommended child support be set at $2,500 a month -- less than 5 percent of Jackson's gross monthly income. The circuit court agreed and ordered Jackson to pay that amount. Jackson appealed, contending that $2,500 a month exceeded the amount Proctor needed to cover Taila's expenses. "[Jackson's] position puts the mother, proverbially speaking, 'between a rock and a hard place,'" Hollander wrote for the three-judge appellate panel, rejecting his argument. "The father complains that the child support award should not exceed the child's expenses. The mother, however, has endeavored to live within her meager means," Hollander continued, noting that Proctor, a student at the time of the lower court proceedings, earned about $16,000 a year. The court also rejected Jackson's suggestion that support should be lower because he never lived with Taila and was never married to her mother. "The decision as to support does not turn on whether the parents were ever married to each other; a child's needs are not tied to the parents' prior marital status," Hollander wrote. "When it comes to the needs of children, there is no place for a court-approved two-class system that rewards the choices of parents at the expense of the child. Regardless of whether [Taila's] parents were married, she is the child of a wealthy father and she is entitled to at least some of the privileges of wealth." The court concluded that the child support award was not excessive and that it did not amount to "a back door means of enriching the mother." "Understandably, a custodial parent of a child whose non-custodial parent is extremely wealthy will inevitably reap some benefits," Hollander wrote. "But, this is not a case in which the mother was greedy, excessive, or unreasonable." Lawyers for Jackson and Proctor could not be reached before press time on Friday.