J.F. v. J.S.

• Decision Date: 02 December 2022
• Docket Number: 2210399
• Parties: J.F. and A.F. v. J.S. and M.S.
• Court: Alabama Court of Civil Appeals

J.F. and A.F. v. J.S. and M.S.

No. 2210399

Alabama Court of Civil Appeals

December 2, 2022

Appeal from DeKalb Juvenile Court (JU-17-336.02)

EDWARDS, Judge.

On August 8, 2019, pursuant to a stipulation of dependency, the DeKalb Juvenile Court ("the juvenile court") entered a dependency judgment awarding custody of L.J.S ("the child"), the child of J.S. ("the father") and M.S. ("the mother"), to J.F. and A.F. ("the maternal 2210399 grandparents") the mother and the father were awarded visitation with the child at the discretion of the maternal grandparents. The dependency judgment set the matter for a review hearing in February 2020. In February 2020, the father filed a motion seeking an order awarding him custody of the child. After the review hearing, the juvenile court entered a pendente lite order awarding the father specified visitation with the child.

In January 2021, the mother filed a motion seeking an order awarding her custody of the child. After numerous continuances, most of which appeared to be related to issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the juvenile court held a trial on November 30, 2021, and December 10, 2021, after which it entered a judgment in January 2022 awarding joint custody of the child to the mother and the father. The maternal grandparents filed a postjudgment motion, which the juvenile court denied, and they then filed a timely appeal. We dismiss the appeal.

As the juvenile court correctly determined in its January 2022 judgment, the August 2019 dependency judgment awarding custody of the child to the maternal grandparents was a final judgment relating to the child's custody and was not a pendente lite custody award. As a result, although the juvenile court retained jurisdiction over the child and his custody, see Ala. Code 1975, § 12-15-117 and § 12-15-117.1, the juvenile court's jurisdiction to modify the custody award could be invoked only through the initiation of a custody-modification action by the father or the mother. See T.J.H. v. S.N.F., 960 So.2d 669, 673 (Ala. Civ App. 2006) (explaining that, after the entry of a final judgment awarding custody, the filing of a complaint seeking a modification of custody and the payment of the appropriate filing fee "would be necessary to institute a new proceeding" to change the award of custody). Neither the father nor the mother instituted a new action by filing a custody-modification complaint and paying a filing fee in the juvenile court or by serving the maternal grandparents with such a complaint pursuant to Rule 4, Ala. R. Civ. P. See Ex parte Bragg, 237 So.3d 235, 238 (Ala. Civ. App. 2017) (explaining that, once a final judgment has been entered and postjudgment practice has concluded, a party may seek modification of that final judgment only by instituting a new action); L.H. v. L.S., 140 So.3d 946, 950 (Ala. Civ App. 2013) (concluding that a juvenile court could not consider a father's motion for custody filed after the entry of a final custody judgment, "because no custody action was pending before [the juvenile court] over which it had jurisdiction"); Farmer v. Farmer, 842 So.2d 679, 680 (Ala. Civ. App. 2002) (explaining that "a petition to modify [custody] is a separate action that requires a proper filing, the...