Brown v. Brown
| Decision Date | 04 September 1985 |
| Parties | Gerald BROWN v. Sylvia BROWN. Civ. 4607. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Civil Appeals |
John A. Tinney, Roanoke, for appellant.
No brief for appellee.
The original opinion in this case dated April 24, 1985, was heretofore withdrawn by the court. The following opinion is substituted in its place.
This is a modification case where the father of two children seeks to terminate child support.
Upon the mother's complaint, a divorce judgment was rendered by the Circuit Court of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, in 1974. The father filed a petition in July 1984 in that same Alabama court, wherein he sought to be relieved from the payment of $100 per month for the support of the children as had been initially required by the divorce judgment. He averred that the daughter is now twenty-one years of age and is self-supporting and that the eighteen-year-old son is confined to the Jeremiah Home for Children in Omaha, Nebraska, at this time. The father further alleged that the mother has been relieved of the custody of the son and that she is no longer required to support him.
Service was had upon the mother by registered mail, and she filed her motion to dismiss the father's petition upon the following presently pertinent grounds. First, she alleged that a Colorado court had rendered a Uniform Reciprocal Enforcement of Support Act (URESA) judgment in March 1984, whereby the father was ordered to pay $200 per month for the support of the son, that the Alabama court lacked subject matter jurisdiction on that account, and that the Colorado judgment was entitled to full faith and credit. Second, she contended that the Alabama court lacked jurisdiction over the parties in that neither the father, mother, nor children are residents of Alabama.
The trial court granted the mother's motion and dismissed the father's modification petition. The father duly appealed.
It has long been the rule in Alabama that, if a divorce decree provides for a child's support, the trial court, at any time thereafter and without an original reservation of power to do so, may modify that aspect of the decree to meet a change of conditions. Hardy v. Hardy, 250 Ala. 297, 34 So.2d 212 (1948); Jenkins v. Jenkins, 418 So.2d 137 (Ala.Civ.App.1982). A proceeding to modify or terminate a child support order is not an independent action, for it is a continuation of or is supplementary to the original divorce action. 24 Am.Jur.2d Divorce and Separation § 1089 (1983).
In the URESA case, Colorado was the responding state. Under URESA, any order of support issued by a court of a responding state does not supersede any previous order of support issued in a divorce. Ala.Code (1975), § 30-4-93(b). Hence, the Colorado judgment did not oust the Alabama court of continuing jurisdiction to modify or terminate its own child support provisions as were contained in the 1974 divorce judgment of the parties.
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