Ready for Review?
August 31, 2015 § Leave a comment
If a chancellor orders joint custody to be effective only until the child turns five in 2017, at which time the matter will be reviewed, is that a final, appealable judgment?
That was one of the questions addressed by the COA in the case of Thames v. Thames, decided July 28, 2015. We discussed this case here before in the context of the reasonability of a joint custody arrangement.
I say it was “addressed” because the court dealt with it as if the appeal had raised the R54(b) argument as a jurisdictional issue. The appellant, though, did not argue it that way. Rather, she contended that the chancellor erred by violating the maxim that “equity delights to do justice completely and not by halves” when he failed to determine who would have custody of the parties’ daughter after she started five-year-old kindergarten.
What the chancellor actually said was that the parties could have the option either: (a) to agree to a review hearing in February, 2017; or (b) to certify the judgment as final and appealable per R54(b). Despite that, in the record there is no order or judgment agreeing to a review hearing, and there is no R54 certification.
Undeterred, Debra Thames appealed. The case was reversed on other grounds, but here is how Judge Lee dealt with Debra’s maxim argument:
¶10. While Debra does not argue that the judgment was not final and appealable, the underlying issue is the same, and that is whether any issues remain to be resolved [in the litigation before the chancellor]. Following the reasoning in Crider [v. Crider, 905 So.2d 706, 707-08 (¶¶3-5) (Miss. App. 2004)], we find that the judgment was final, and it disposed of all of the issues until Sofia starts five-year-old kindergarten. While the chancellor in this case did not specify the exact month and year in the final judgment as did the chancellor in Crider, the visitation schedule ends in February 2017 [Fn omitted], and the chancellor stated that the order is to remain in effect until further order of the court and only until Sofia starts five-year-old kindergarten. Furthermore, the chancellor gave the parties the option of agreeing to a future hearing to review custody or making the judgment a Rule 54(b) judgment. Either way, a future hearing was to be held to revisit custody. Formal recognition of the need to revisit custody before Sofia starts five-year-old kindergarten did not prevent the judgment from being final.
From this we can take away that a chancellor in a case such as this may leave open the possibility of a future custody arrangement based on a future event that will be a major turning point in the child’s life, such as beginning school, and the fact that it will need to be revisited will not affect its finality for appeal. Allowing chancellors this kind of flexibility provides more options for the trial judge to employ for the best interest of the child.
I think this is a very narrow holding, and you will be unsuccessful if you try in different set of facts to stretch this holding to justify an appeal from an incomplete judgment.
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