Background
Charles and Nicole Margis divorced in January 2022 under a judgment incorporating their agreement to share physical and legal custody of their two unemancipated children. Nicole sought modification of the custody arrangement in April 2023, and Charles filed his own modification complaint two months later. During the resulting Probate and Family Court litigation, the judge entered several temporary custody orders. Orders issued in June and September 2025 gave Nicole sole physical custody. The same court had also found Charles in contempt in April 2025 for failing to follow the custody arrangement then in effect.
Charles pursued interlocutory review under the first paragraph of G. L. c. 231, § 118, which permits a party to ask a single justice of the Appeals Court to review an interlocutory trial-court ruling. In November 2025, a single justice partly granted his first petition and directed the trial judge to reassess custody and parenting arrangements and issue a superseding order with findings. After the trial judge did so, Charles filed another § 118 petition in January 2026. A single justice denied that petition and a supplement in February. His attempted appeal from those denials was struck because a party has no right to appeal a single justice’s denial of first-paragraph § 118 relief.
Charles then petitioned a single justice of the Supreme Judicial Court under G. L. c. 211, § 3, seeking relief from the same temporary custody orders, a stay of their enforcement, and reassignment of further proceedings to a different judge. Section 3 gives the SJC general superintendence authority over lower courts, but it is an extraordinary remedy rather than an additional appellate tier. After the single justice denied the petition, Charles appealed to the full court under S.J.C. Rule 2:21.
The Court’s Holding
The SJC affirmed. Rule 2:21 required Charles to demonstrate that review of the challenged trial-court decision could not adequately be obtained through an appeal from a final adverse judgment or by another available route. He could not make that showing because he had already invoked the statutory mechanism for interlocutory review in the Appeals Court. The fact that the second § 118 petition did not produce the relief he wanted did not make that avenue inadequate and did not open a second route through the SJC’s superintendence power.
The court relied on its prior decisions distinguishing an unavailable remedy from an unsuccessful one. Once a litigant has sought first-paragraph § 118 review of an interlocutory ruling, § 3 does not supply additional immediate review merely because the Appeals Court single justice denied relief. The SJC also rejected Charles’s argument that immediate and continuing harm from the temporary custody orders made ordinary appellate review inadequate. Custody rulings remain reviewable through the usual appellate process, and allegations of ongoing harm do not by themselves convert § 3 into a substitute for that process.
Finally, the court declined to consider issues Charles raised on appeal that had not been presented to the county-court single justice, including matters apparently arising from trial-court proceedings that occurred while the SJC appeal was pending. Appellate review of the single justice’s decision is confined to the record and issues placed before that justice. On that record, the single justice neither erred nor abused her discretion.
Key Takeaways
- A party who has used the first paragraph of G. L. c. 231, § 118, cannot obtain another round of interlocutory review under G. L. c. 211, § 3, simply because the Appeals Court single justice denied the requested relief.
- An unsuccessful interlocutory remedy is not an inadequate remedy. Rule 2:21 focuses on whether review is available by ordinary appeal or another means, not whether an earlier request succeeded.
- Claims that temporary custody orders are causing immediate or continuing harm do not, without more, displace the ordinary appellate process or justify extraordinary superintendence relief.
- Arguments not presented to the SJC single justice ordinarily cannot be introduced for the first time in an appeal to the full court, including issues based on later trial-court developments.
Why It Matters
Margis gives Massachusetts family-law litigators a clear map for challenging temporary custody orders. A § 118 petition can provide prompt, discretionary review, but it is not the first step in an escalating series of interlocutory appeals. If a single justice denies relief, counsel generally must preserve the issue, continue litigating in the Probate and Family Court, and pursue an ordinary appeal after final judgment. Recasting the same objections as a request for the SJC’s general superintendence will not overcome that limitation.
The decision also matters beyond custody litigation. Massachusetts practitioners confronting any significant interlocutory order should choose and frame a § 118 petition with care because § 3 is reserved for circumstances in which ordinary review and other available remedies are truly inadequate. Counsel should place every material argument before the single justice at the outset and separately preserve later developments in the trial court; the full SJC will not use an appeal from a § 3 denial to decide issues that were never presented below.