The Utah Court of Appeals held that a later garnishment mooted a challenge to contempt-based collection, while remanding for findings fixing the amount of daycare arrears.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed an order requiring a self-represented lawyer to retain counsel, a custody modification tried by consent, and rescission of stale fee awards.
The Utah Court of Appeals held that a parent may challenge reunification efforts from earlier closed removal proceedings when those proceedings support a later termination petition.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed portions of a divorce decree but required additional findings on property valuation, alimony, support arrears, and attorney fees.
The Utah Court of Appeals upheld the divorce-date valuation of trust assets but vacated their distribution because the trial court did not resolve tracing and dissipation issues.
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling that preserved a presumed father’s legal parentage because disrupting his established relationship with two children would be inequitable.
The Utah Court of Appeals upheld sole custody, supervised parent-time, and vexatious-litigant restrictions after repeated defiance of court orders.
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed a dependency adjudication because a noncustodial father’s lack of a prior relationship did not establish inability to care for his child.
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed an expert exclusion and attorney fees denial in a high-asset divorce arising from a California-law premarital agreement, holding that a technically deficient expert disclosure was harmless where the disclosing party promptly provided a full report and offered deposition access, and that a premarital agreement’s separate-property clause cannot waive a spouse’s right to attorney fees under Utah Code § 81-1-203(1).
The Utah Court of Appeals affirmed a post-decree minivan enforcement order because ordering payment of lost equity fell within the four corners of the divorce decree, but reversed a child support arrearage ruling because the district court refused to hold an evidentiary hearing mandated by Utah R. Civ. P. 108(d)(2) and applied abuse-of-discretion review instead of the independent assessment required by rule 108(f).
The Utah Court of Appeals reversed a district court’s order enforcing a post-divorce mortgage-payment obligation, holding that Provision 2 of the parties’ Modification supports at least three reasonable interpretations—property-specific, region-limited, and location-neutral—and is therefore ambiguous as a matter of law, requiring remand for an evidentiary hearing on the parties’ intent before the provision can be enforced against Stephen Schmidt.
The Utah Court of Appeals vacated a protective order against a sister whose angry text—expressing a conditional desire to fight—did not place the petitioner in reasonable fear of imminent physical harm under the Cohabitant Abuse Act, because the threatened violence was contingent on a future event, the parties were physically distant, and there was no history of violence between them.
For the third time, the Utah Court of Appeals vacated an order terminating Father’s parental rights as to two young children, holding that all three of his trial attorneys — retained counsel and two appointed counsel — rendered ineffective assistance by failing to file pretrial disclosures and seek a continuance, depriving Father of the ability to call sibling witnesses whose testimony bore directly on the best-interest determination; the court also held that Utah’s IAC right extends to retained attorneys who never formally enter an appearance.