Summary
The Supreme Court of Georgia held that a trial court may not modify the terms of a divorce decree through a contempt proceeding. The divorce decree restricted the parties from relocating more than fifteen road miles from the marital home, but the contempt order required Gunderson to move into the child’s school district. The court reversed that portion of the contempt order and remanded the case, while leaving the other contempt findings undisturbed.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether a trial court may, in a contempt proceeding, order a divorced parent to move into a particular school district when the divorce decree instead imposes a geographic restriction measured by road miles.
- Whether the trial court's contempt order impermissibly modified the parties' divorce decree.
Holdings
- A trial court lacks authority to modify the terms of a divorce decree through a contempt proceeding. The order requiring Gunderson to move into the child's school district changed, rather than clarified or enforced, the decree's fifteen-road-mile relocation restriction and was therefore an unauthorized modification.
Key quotations
““[A] trial court lacks the authority to modify the terms of a divorce decree in a contempt proceeding.”” (source p. 2)
“The trial court’s order requiring Gunderson to move back into the school district in which the minor child is enrolled in school amounts to an unauthorized modification of the decree.” (source p. 2)
Factual background
Gunderson and Sandy were divorced in 2010, and their decree incorporated a settlement agreement providing approximately equal physical custody time and requiring each parent to maintain a primary residence within fifteen road miles of the marital home while a child was a minor or attending high school full time. Gunderson remarried and moved more than once without the required thirty days' notice; when Sandy filed his contempt motion, she allegedly lived more than forty-eight road miles from the referenced marital residence. The trial court ordered her to move back into the child's school district.
Procedural history
The parties' 2010 divorce decree incorporated a settlement agreement limiting each party's permanent relocation to within fifteen road miles of the marital home. After Gunderson moved beyond that restriction, Sandy sought contempt. The trial court found Gunderson in contempt and ordered her to move back into the school district where Sandy lived and the minor child attended school. The Supreme Court of Georgia granted discretionary review and transferred the appeal from the Court of Appeals because the case involved the Court's appellate jurisdiction over divorce cases.
Remand instructions
The portion of the contempt order modifying the geographic restrictions in the relocation agreement is reversed, and the case is remanded for further action not inconsistent with the opinion.