Justia Civil Procedure Opinion Summaries

Husband Theodore Weitz appealed an order denying his motion to reopen the case after wife Sheryl's notice of voluntary dismissal, filed pursuant to Vermont Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(i). On appeal, he argued: (1) Rule 41(a)(1)(i) “is in direct conflict” with the Vermont Rules for Family Proceedings and was therefore inapplicable to the Family Division; (2) Rule 41(a)(1)(i) was not intended to apply in cases where significant resources have been expended; and (3) that it was inequitable to apply Rule 41(a)(1)(i) in this case due to alleged bad faith and bad acts by wife. Finding no reversible error, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed. View "Weitz v. Weitz" on Justia Law

The Supreme Judicial Court vacated the judgment of the district court dismissing Appellant's complaint seeking to be determined a de facto parent of Appellee's adopted child, holding that the district court erred in dismissing this case for lack of standing.The district court dismissed Appellant's complaint for lack of standing. On appeal, Appellant argued that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to hold a hearing to determine disputed facts and in concluding that Appellee's refusal to allow Appellant to adopt the child was dispositive of the issue of whether Appellee acknowledged or behaved as though Appellant was a parent to the child. The Supreme Judicial Court remanded the case, holding that the court's treatment of the single fact of Appellee's refusal to allow Appellant to adopt as dispositive in the standing analysis constituted an error of law, and the court should have held a hearing to determine disputed facts regarding the issue of standing. View "Young v. King" on Justia Law

Appellant Molly Kent challenged a specific ruling of the family court on her request to modify a child custody and child support order issued by a North Carolina court. The family court granted in part and denied in part the appellant's request, without first determining whether the California court had jurisdiction under the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act (UCCJEA). Accordingly, without reaching the merits of the arguments related to the substantive ruling on appeal, the California Court of Appeal reversed the order because, based on the record before the family court at the time it ruled, the court lacked jurisdiction to modify the North Carolina order. View "In re Marriage of Kent" on Justia Law

The parties divorced in November 2004. As part of the divorce, the court ordered wife to transfer funds from her retirement account to husband. In 2006, the court approved a proposed Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) to effectuate the transfer of those funds. The order was never “qualified,” however, because there was no money in the retirement account that wife identified. The court approved another proposed QDRO in February 2007 specifying a different retirement account identified by wife. In August 2017, husband filed a motion to enforce, asserting that the owed funds were never transferred to him and that there were no funds in the second retirement account that wife identified. The court denied husband’s motion to enforce, finding it barred by the eight-year statute of limitations for actions on judgments. The Vermont Supreme Court did not consider husband’s attempt to effectuate a transfer of these retirement funds by QDRO to be an action on a judgment, and therefore reversed and remanded. View "Johnston v. Johnston" on Justia Law

A wife sought a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) against her husband for violating the temporary restraining order (TRO) a trial court had issued against the husband eight months earlier. The court denied the DVRO on the ground that a technical violation of a TRO was not an act of domestic violence. In reversing the trial court, the Court of Appeal found that under the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, abuse included behaviors that were enjoined by a TRO, and was not limited to acts inflicting physical injury, thus making the wife’s assertion her husband’s specific acts entitled her to a DVRO. The Court remanded the case for the trial court to make necessary findings regarding whether the acts alleged by the wife actually occurred and, if they did, the court was mandated to enter the DVRO as requested. View "N.T. v. H.T." on Justia Law

This case presented two issues for the Court of Appeals' review: (1) whether the nonmarital biological child of an absentee father who never openly held her out as his own have standing under Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60 to sue for his wrongful death if she failed to obtain a court order declaring paternity during his lifetime?; and (2) if she did not have standing, did section 377.60 violate the state or federal equal protection clauses? Upon the specific facts of this case, the Court concluded the child did not have standing, and there was no equal protection violation. "We cannot imagine the Legislature intended to confer wrongful death standing on a child who had no relationship whatsoever with the decedent to the exclusion of the decedent’s other family members with whom he did have a relationship." View "Stennett v. Miller" on Justia Law

Appellant Angela Antini and Appellee Matthew Antini were parents to two children. In 2013, the parties were divorced under New York law. In the decree, the New York court awarded Appellant physical custody over the children with the parties sharing joint legal custody. Appellee was granted visitation rights and ordered to pay child support. Prior to the entry of the Judgment of Divorce, Appellant moved with the children from New York to Maine. In April 2014, Appellee picked the children up in Maine for visitation but transported them to Oklahoma and, despite Appellant's requests and her subsequent trip to Oklahoma to recover the children, Appellee refused to return them. After it became apparent that Appellee was not going to return the children, Appellant registered the New York divorce decree as a foreign judgment in a Maine court and filed a motion for contempt against Appellee. Appellee did not return the children, so the Maine court found Appellee in contempt. He ignored an offer to purge his contempt by returning both children; Appellee never returned the children to Maine. Because of this failure to return the children, the Maine court issued a bench warrant for Appellee. In December 2014, Appellee filed a petition in the District Court of Stephens County, Oklahoma, to register the New York divorce decree in Oklahoma and asked the court to assume custody jurisdiction. Appellee's petition did not reference the Maine proceedings. Appellant filed a special appearance to object to the registration of the New York divorce and also sought a writ of habeas corpus requesting custody of the children. The trial court concluded it lacked jurisdiction over Appellee's petition, Maine retained child custody jurisdiction, and ordered the return of the children to Appellant. The Oklahoma court also denied and dismissed the petition to register the New York decree in Oklahoma. Appellant filed a pro se motion to modify custody to the Maine court, requesting sole custody of the children and granting Appellee supervised visitation. Appellee responded with an answer and counterclaim, but then failed to appear. The Maine court then granted Appellant's motion and ruled it had exclusive and continuing jurisdiction over the children. No appeal of the Maine court's decision was entered and the decision is now final under Maine law. Appellant thereafter moved for costs and attorney's fees in Oklahoma, which was denied. She appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The Oklahoma Supreme Court determined Appellant was entitled to reasonable and necessary expenses including attorney fees borne by her counsel. View "Antini v. Antini" on Justia Law

In January 2013, the family court ordered respondent C.P. to pay monthly child support. From September 2013, through August 2017, C.P. was incarcerated in federal prison. Less than a month after his release, C.P. promptly filed a request for the court to adjust the child support arrears that accrued during his incarceration—which the parties and the family court handled under the then-current Family Code section 4007.5. (Stats. 2015, ch. 629, sec. 2, eff. Oct. 8, 2015). The court granted C.P.'s request over the objection of appellant San Diego County Department of Child Support Services (Department) The Court of Appeal determined the family court erred as a matter of law in granting C.P.'s request: “Given the unambiguous language in current section 4007.5 and the timing of C.P.'s child support order, incarceration, and request for adjustment of arrears, the statutory relief awarded is unavailable to C.P. under current section 4007.5.” Subdivision (f) expressly provided that the statute applied only to child support orders issued on or after October 8, 2015, and C.P.'s child support order under consideration was issued in January 2013. Furthermore, contrary to the family court's stated reasons, at the time of the repeal of former section 4007.5 (Stats. 2010, ch. 495, sec. 1), C.P. did not have a vested statutory right to have his support order adjusted, and current section 4007.5 did not contain a saving clause pursuant to which former section 4007.5 could have provided statutory protection for incarcerated child support obligors like C.P. However, the Court determined C.P.'s request could be read to have sought the adjustment in child support arrears under former section 4007.5, which was repealed as of July 1, 2015; but the parties did not brief and the trial court did not consider whether former section 4007.5 contains a saving clause that provides C.P. with a statutory basis on which to have obtained the requested relief. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal reversed the order granting C.P.'s request and remanded with directions to consider, as appropriate based on briefing to be requested, whether former section 4007.5 included a saving clause that allowed its application to C.P.'s request and, if so, whether C.P. made a sufficient showing for relief. View "County of San Diego Dept. of Child Support Services v. C.P." on Justia Law

The parties, Stone and Thompson, met in 1983 and began a romantic relationship. Thompson was married to another man at the time and obtained a divorce in 1987. Later that year, Stone and Thompson had their first child. After Hurricane Hugo hit Charleston, South Carolina in 1989, the parties had their second child and started living together. They continued to live, raise their children, and manage rental properties together for approximately 20 years, but ultimately ended their relationship after Thompson discovered Stone was having an affair with a woman in Costa Rica. In 2012, Stone filed an amended complaint in family court alleging, inter alia, he was entitled to a declaratory judgment that the parties were common-law married, a divorce, and an equitable distribution of alleged marital property. Thompson contended the parties were not common-law married, asserted several counterclaims, and sought dismissal of the case. If the trial court would not dismiss the case, Thompson sought to bifurcate the issues to first determine whether the parties were common-law married. After a hearing, the family court denied Thompson's motion to dismiss but granted her motion to bifurcate, ordering a trial on the sole issue of whether a common-law marriage existed between the parties. The court reasoned that, should it determine no marriage existed, it would not need to address the other issues in the case. The issue this appeal presented for the South Carolina Supreme Court’s review was whether the trial court order finding a common-law marriage, was immediately appealable under the general appealability statute, S.C. Code Ann. 14-3-330. The court of appeals held the order was interlocutory because it did not end the case, and further, that it was not immediately appealable under the statute. The Supreme Court concluded that because the order involved the merits of the causes of action, it reversed. View "Stone v. Thompson" on Justia Law

Appellant Sean Pearson appealed a circuit court order dismissing his petitions for parenting time for lack of standing. Appellant is the biological father of a child born in March 2010. Appellant surrendered his parental rights to the child in 2012. In conjunction with the surrender, the mother adopted the child and became the child's sole parent. The mother allowed appellant to have contact with the child after the surrender; the parties disputed the nature and frequency of that contact. Appellant moved to reopen the surrender case in 2014. The probate division denied the motion after reviewing, inter alia, the recording of the 2012 hearing at which the appellant surrendered his parental rights to the child. Based on the record, the probate division concluded that appellant “was fully advised of his rights at the time of the [surrender] proceeding,” “knowingly and voluntarily waived those rights,” and “freely and voluntarily acknowledged” that he would no longer be the parent of the child upon the court’s acceptance of the surrender. In 2017, appellant filed petitions for parenting time with the child in the family division. The mother moved to dismiss, arguing in part that the appellant lacked standing because he had surrendered his parental rights to the child in 2012. Relying on In the Matter of J.B. & J.G., 157 N.H. 577 (2008), appellant claimed he had standing because he had “acted as [the child]’s father” in the years since the surrender. At the appellant’s request, the trial court held an evidentiary hearing on the motion to dismiss, at which it heard testimony concerning, inter alia, the frequency and nature of the appellant’s contact with the child post-surrender. Following the hearing, the court granted the motion to dismiss for lack of standing. The New Hampshire Supreme Court agreed appellant lacked standing and affirmed dismissal of appellant's petitions. View "In the Matter of Richell Chrestensen & Sean Pearson" on Justia Law