R.N.P. v. S.W.W.
| Docket Number | CL-2022-1291 |
| Decision Date | 25 August 2023 |
| Parties | R.N.P. v. S.W.W. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Civil Appeals |
Appeal from Baldwin Juvenile Court (CS-19-900034)
On January 15, 2019, R.N.P. ("the mother") commenced an action in the Baldwin Juvenile Court ("the juvenile court") seeking to establish S.W.W.'s paternity of her child and requesting an award of custody of the child, a determination of S.W.W.'s child-support obligation, and an attorney fee. The mother's action was assigned case number CS-19-900034.
S.W.W commenced a separate action in which he asserted claims similar to those that the mother had asserted in her action. S.W.W.'s action was assigned case number CS-19-900061. The mother filed a motion to consolidate the two actions. The juvenile court granted that motion and ordered the two actions consolidated, and it specified that all future filings were to be filed under case number CS-19-900034.
We note that the order of consolidation did not cause the two actions to lose their separate identities or merge the two actions into one action. See Rule 42, Ala. R. Civ. P.; Ex parte Autauga Cnty. Dep't of Hum. Res., 353 So.3d 542, 545-46 (Ala. Civ. App. 2021); H.J.T. v. State ex rel. M.S.M., 34 So.3d 1276, 1278 (Ala. Civ. App. 2009). The record contains no indication that any further action was taken by the parties or the juvenile court in case number CS-19-900061, and this appeal pertains solely to case number CS-19-900034. For those reasons, for the purposes of this opinion, we consider the remaining filings and orders discussed in this opinion as having been filed or entered in case number CS-19-900034.
On October 12, 2019, S.W.W. filed a motion seeking an "emergency" award of visitation with the child. In that motion, he alleged that the mother had recently stopped allowing him to exercise physical custody of or visitation with the child. On November 22, the juvenile court conducted a hearing on that motion at which it received ore tenus evidence. At the conclusion of that pendente lite hearing the juvenile court made an oral finding that S.W.W. was the child's legal father.
On November 25, 2019, the juvenile court entered a pendente lite order awarding the parties joint legal custody and joint physical custody of the child with custodial periods on an alternating-weekly basis. That November 25, 2019, pendente lite order also set forth certain restrictions and conditions, such as directing the parties to exchange the child's medications for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder ("ADHD") and to dispense that medication to the child as ordered by the child's doctor restricting the parties to "moderate" alcohol consumption in the presence of the child, and prohibiting, when the child is present in the home, the overnight presence of a member of the opposite sex to whom the parent is not married. In its November 25, 2019, pendente lite order, the juvenile court did not formally adjudicate S.W.W.'s paternity.
The juvenile court received ore tenus evidence at a hearing on the parties' claims over the course of two days: July 26, 2021, and August 1, 2022. The record does not explain the reason for the year-long delay between the two days of testimony.
On August 9, 2022, the juvenile court entered a judgment adjudicating S.W.W. (hereinafter "the father") as the child's father, awarding the parties joint legal and joint physical custody of the child, and denying the parties' respective requests for an award of child support. The father filed a postjudgment motion on August 10, 2022. On August 17, 2022, the mother filed a postjudgment motion. The father's August 10, 2022, postjudgment motion and the mother's August 17, 2022, postjudgment motion could each remain pending before the juvenile court for 14 days. Rule 1(B), Ala. R. Juv. P. Because of the August 17, 2022, filing date of the later of the two postjudgment motions, which was mother's postjudgment motion, the juvenile court had until August 31, 2022, to rule on that motion or, in the absence of a written order by the juvenile court extending the time for the juvenile court to consider the motion, the motion would be denied by operation of law. See Rule 59.1, Ala. R. Civ. P.; Rule 1(B), Ala. R. Juv. P.
After conducting a hearing on the parties' postjudgment motions, the juvenile court entered orders on August 24, 2022, stating that each of those motions is "granted in part and denied in part." The August 24, 2022, orders did not specify the nature of the relief that the juvenile court intended to grant or deny. Instead, those orders directed the father's attorney to prepare a draft of a postjudgment order. Moreover, the August 24, 2022, orders did not indicate any intent to extend the time for the juvenile court to rule on the postjudgment motions pursuant to Rule 1(B), Ala. R. Juv. P.
We note that the juvenile court's August 24, 2022, orders did not constitute a ruling on the mother's and father's postjudgment motions.
Rule 58(b), Ala. R. Civ. P. (emphasis added).
An order granting a postjudgment motion in part and denying it in part, without specifying the substance of the relief actually granted or denied, is not a ruling on the merits of that motion. Espinosa v. Espinosa Hernandez, 282 So.3d 1, 14 (Ala. Civ. App. 2019). The August 24, 2022, orders did not mention any substantive ruling on the merits. Therefore, the parties' postjudgment motions were denied by operation of law, at the latest, on August 31, 2022. See Rules 1(A) and (B), Ala. R. Juv. P.; Rule 59.1. Thereafter, the juvenile court lost jurisdiction to act on those postjudgment motions. Venturi v. Venturi, 233 So.3d 982, 983 (Ala. Civ. App. 2016); see also V.B. v. Jefferson Cnty. Dep't of Hum. Res., 356 So.3d 199, 203 (Ala. Civ. App. 2021) (); and K.G. v. M.E., 355 So.3d 344, 348 n.3 (Ala. Civ. App. 2021). Although the juvenile court entered an order on September 12, 2022, purporting to amend the August 9, 2022, judgment, that order was a nullity. Venturi v. Venturi, supra.
On September 8, 2022, the mother filed an appeal to the Baldwin Circuit Court ("the circuit court"); the appeal was timely due to the denial by operation of law of her postjudgment motion on August 31, 2022. The circuit court determined that there was an adequate record for appeal, and, as a result, it transferred the mother's appeal to this court pursuant to Rule 28(D), Ala. R. Juv. P.
The record sets forth the following pertinent facts. The parties never married, but they were living together in June 2011, when the child was born. The father's paternity was not disputed. According to the mother, the parties separated in 2014, and, for some period, the child lived with her and visited the father. The father testified at the November 22, 2019, pendente lite hearing that he and the mother had shared custody of the child on an alternating-weekly basis for the three-and-a-half to four years preceding that hearing date. The mother disputed a part of that statement, averring instead that the parties had shared physical custody of the child since 2017. The parties agreed that, since they separated, the father had paid the mother $350 per month in child support. In addition, the father testified that, since the time of the parties' separation, he had paid the child's medical expenses and all of the child's expenses related to extracurricular activities. The father also presented evidence that he had paid for the child's childcare necessitated by the parties' work schedules.
At the time of the pendente lite hearing, the father had been living with a woman, T.H., for approximately three years. He stated that, at the time of that hearing, he was engaged to T.H. The mother testified that she did not approve of the child staying in the father's home with the father and a woman to whom the father was not married.
At the time of the pendente lite hearing, the father was working as a boat captain and worked "offshore" for two-to-three days at a time in the summer. The father had allowed T.H. to care for the child while he worked, and the mother had objected to that arrangement.
The father testified that in October 2019 the mother had begun refusing to allow him custodial time with the child and that she had threatened to have him arrested for kidnapping if he attempted to exercise custodial time or visitation with the child. The father stated that the mother had claimed that he had no "parental rights" to the child because his paternity had never been established pursuant to a court order. The record contains a letter from the mother's attorney to the father's attorney dated October 22, 2019, that states that because there was no court order allowing the father to visit the child, the mother would no longer allow the child to visit the father when T.H. was in the father's home or if the father was working offshore. That letter also advised the father that, because there was no child-support order in place, he no longer had to contribute "the very small sum" that he had been paying the mother for the support of the child. The father testified that, after he had received that notification, he had paid the $350 per month into a savings account and used some of the amounts in that savings account to pay for items the child needed.
The mother admitted that she had...
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