Posted by Nydia Streets of Streets Law in Florida Child Custody
What happens when you appeal a Florida family law case that was resolved in your favor? This was an issue in the case Kilcrease v. Brown, 1D2022-3620 (Fla. 1st DCA March 6, 2024)
The parties were involved in child custody litigation in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma court maintained exclusive jurisdiction over the child custody determination, but permitted the mother to relocate to Florida. The mother registered the Oklahoma order, seeking to enforce the child support provisions in Florida. The father filed a motion to enforce the timesharing in Florida. The Florida court eventually granted the mother’s motion to enforce the child support order and denied the father’s motion to enforce the time-sharing. The mother appealed, but the father did not.
The appellate court first noted “Even though the mother obtained all the relief that she sought in her motion, she expresses concern in her brief over one paragraph in the order granting that motion: ‘The Court Minutes/Notes filed in the District Court of Payne County, State of Oklahoma . . . is found to be a temporary order, subject to modification without [the] need for proving a substantial, material, and unanticipated change.’ This legal determination had no relation to the relief granted to the mother, and she should rest assured that the statement is a legal nullity.” The appellate court explained that this was so because the requirements of the UCCJEA had not been met.
The appellate court ended up dismissing the mother’s appeal, holding “Regardless of whether the paragraph of concern in the circuit court’s order was simply irrelevant or, worse, unauthorized as a modification of the Oklahoma court’s timesharing plan, it has no legal effect to the detriment of the mother. Because the mother was awarded complete relief on her motion to enforce, and the father’s motion was denied in its entirety, there is no relief for her to claim in this appeal, which then must be dismissed. The supreme court explained it this way: ‘When a litigant succeeds in obtaining all [s]he asks in the trial court having jurisdiction of the cause, [s]he no longer has a grievance to be corrected by an appeal to a reviewing court, whose chief duties are to correct abuses in the trial court, whereby the rights of a litigant were prejudiced and [s]he was thereby deprived of h[er] just dues under the law. When [s]he has no such grievance, [s]he is not entitled by appeal to have the appellate court approve the judgment in h[er] favor.’”
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