Saavedra v. Samayoa

• Docket Number: 380-2023
• Decision Date: 18 January 2024
• Parties: SAMANTHA SAAVEDRA v. LUIS A. SAMAYOA
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

1

SAMANTHA SAAVEDRA
v.
LUIS A. SAMAYOA

No. 380-2023

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

January 18, 2024

UNREPORTED IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF MARYLAND ^[*]

Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County Case No.: C-02-FM-18-003315

Reed, Zic, Getty, Joseph M. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.

OPINION

Getty, J.

2

This appeal stems from a consent order modifying the parties' custody and child support obligations. After unsuccessful attempts at court-ordered mediation on these subjects, Appellant Samantha Saavedra^[1] ("Mother") and Appellee Luis Samayoa ("Father") reached an agreement at a pretrial settlement conference in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. Mother's counsel read the terms of the agreement into the record, and the court directed them to submit a consent order embodying those terms by the end of the week.

Mother filed a proposed consent order she contends accurately reflected the terms placed on the record, but Father had refused to sign it. Instead, Father filed a Motion to Enforce Settlement Agreement, claiming that Mother's proposed order misrepresented the parties' agreement. Father included his own proposed order containing several terms not discussed at the hearing, which also incorporated, but did not merge, a separate Parenting and Custody Agreement with more terms. The circuit court granted Father's motion and entered his proposed order. Mother appealed.

Mother presents two questions for our review,^[2] but we need address only one, which we have rephrased here:

3

Did the trial court abuse its discretion in entering Father's proposed consent order?

For the reasons below, we vacate the circuit court's judgment and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

BACKGROUND

Mother and Father divorced in December 2019. They had four children during their marriage, all of whom are still minors. The divorce judgment incorporated, but did not merge, a consent order granting Mother and Father joint legal and shared physical custody. It also set forth Father's child support obligations.

The 2019 Judgment governed the parties' relationship through July 2022 when Mother petitioned the circuit court for modification of custody and child support. As part of her petition, Mother also sought permission to relocate to Florida with the children. Father filed a counter-petition for modification two months later. Although mandated mediation was ultimately unsuccessful, Mother and Father reached an agreement concerning custody and support at a pre-trial settlement conference on March 13, 2023.

Mother's counsel read the terms of the agreement into the record. When he finished, Mother's counsel checked with Father's counsel "to make sure there w[ere] no additions or corrections from his side." Father's counsel responded that there were "just small things

4

in the written agreement that [they] had," which he stated he would send to Mother's counsel following the hearing "[j]ust [to] flesh[] out things." He confirmed, however, that Mother's counsel's recitation "hit the major points."

The court then directed the parties to "submit a consent order . . . with these terms in it." Father's counsel suggested that he had instead already drafted "a parenting agreement with a potential consent order to say that it's incorporating but not merging because it fleshe[d] out a little bit of the details in terms of things like luggage[.]" Mother's counsel conveyed that he would "certainly look at that. And if [Mother] agree[d] to it then [they would] do it that way. But . . . the default w[ould] be just submit a consent order." Mother's counsel then re-confirmed that his on-the-record recitation "hit all the other salient points[.]" Father's counsel responded: "Yes."

Next, both parties were qualified about their acceptance of the agreement on the record. Mother confirmed that nobody promised her "anything outside of the terms that were stated" to coerce her to enter into the agreement. She also confirmed that she understood "that even though [they were discussing] the submission of a document in writing that [the oral recitation of] the agreement [was] enforceable against her and [Father.]" Finally, she affirmed that nothing "was left out of this agreement with regards to the terms that [she] would have agreed to."

Father's voir dire went less smoothly. When asked whether the terms read into the record "reflect[ed] [his] understanding and agreement to the entry of an order respecting those terms[,]" Father replied, through an interpreter: "Not accepted but [Mother's Counsel] mentioned a lot of . . . Correct." Father's counsel then asked whether he had "any

5

changes, modifications, or questions regarding the information that [Mother's Counsel] stated." Father replied:

[Mother's Counsel] did mention a lot [of] big points. Okay. But there was a lot of language and a lot of legal details in the parenting and custody agreement. So I don't know if I should say yes or not but there's a lot of things that were left out that was in the agreement.

At that point, the court interjected and directed Father's counsel to "just ask him if he . . . agree[d] to all the terms in the parenting plan." Father confirmed that he "accepted the terms in the parenting plan as modified by [Mother's counsel's] statements." He also agreed "that this parenting agreement, as modified, would be incorporated but not merged into an order modifying custody and child support." The court then found that the parties were entering into the agreement "voluntarily and with a complete understanding of all of the elements of the agreement." It directed the parties to submit an order by the end of the week.

The parties continued discussions but were unable to reach a subsequent agreement on the "small things" Father's counsel mentioned at the settlement conference. So, keeping with the court's March 17 deadline, Mother filed a proposed consent order containing terms that tracked those placed on the record at the settlement conference. Despite her efforts, Father did not sign this proposed order. Instead, just two hours later, he filed a Motion to Enforce Settlement Agreement along with his own proposed order. The terms of Father's proposed order differed from those in Mother's in several ways. Father's proposed order also incorporated, but did not merge, an attached parenting agreement containing additional terms. However, the parenting agreement, which appears to be a working draft from the

6

mediation session, was not signed by either party. Mother opposed this motion and attached emails between the parties' counsel suggesting that "there was not a meeting of the minds" with respect to the extra terms contained in Father's order. The circuit court granted Father's motion and entered his proposed order on March 28. This appeal timely followed.

We will include additional facts below as necessary for our discussion of the issues.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

"In reviewing [a ruling on] a motion to enforce a settlement agreement, we review the circuit court's factual findings for clear error and its legal conclusions de novo." Na v. Gillespie, 234 Md.App. 742, 749 (2017). That said, when, as here, "the parties entered into an agreement in open court, which under Maryland law is binding upon [them]," intending that the court will later reduce the agreement to a written order, the legal principles regarding consent orders are "equally applicable" to the resulting order. Smith v. Luber, 165 Md.App. 458, 170-71 (2005). We review the entry of such an order for an abuse of discretion. See id. at 468-70. In this context, "a court abuses its discretion if it enters an order containing terms that vary from, or otherwise fail to reflect, those to which the parties have agreed." 4900 Park Heights Ave. LLC v. Cromwell Retail 1, LLC, 246 Md.App. 1, 18 (2020) (citing Smith, 165 Md.App. at 467).

DISCUSSION

Ordinarily, a party may not appeal from a consent judgment. Barnes v. Barnes, 181 Md.App. 390, 411 (2008). There is, however, a narrow, relevant exception: We will entertain an appeal from a consent judgment where the appealing party contends "that the

7

'consent judgment' was not in fact a consent judgment because [it] exceeded the scope of consent, or for other reasons there was never any valid consent." Id. (quoting Chernick v. Chernick, 327 Md. 470, 477 n.1 (1992)). In attacking such a judgment, "[t]he only question that can be raised . . . is whether in fact the decree was entered by consent." Id. (quoting Dorsey v. Wroten, 35 Md.App. 359, 361 (1977)). Put differently, we must examine the record to determine whether Mother consented to the terms of the Order. See id.

Consent judgments are, at their core, a fusion of contracts and judicial decrees. Smith, 165 Md.App. at 470. Maryland follows the objective law of contracts when interpreting contractual language. Id. at 471. "[W]hen the language is clear and unambiguous we must presume that the parties meant what they expressed, leaving no room for construction." Id. (cleaned up). The language in the court's written order need not be identical to what the parties stated in open court. Id. But because that order "will govern the rights of the parties should there be any dispute[,]" it must still accurately reflect the terms of the parties' agreement placed on the record. See id.

In her brief, Mother identifies five issues that were settled by the parties on the record but were later either modified by the court's...