Larkins v. Larkins

364 P.3d 1006, 275 Or. App. 89, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 1417
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedDecember 2, 2015
Docket120464547, 130565220; A155057, A156528
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 364 P.3d 1006 (Larkins v. Larkins) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Larkins v. Larkins, 364 P.3d 1006, 275 Or. App. 89, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 1417 (Or. Ct. App. 2015).

Opinion

DEVORE, P. J.

In this consolidated appeal, mother appeals a general judgment that dissolved her marriage to Adam Southard and granted him custody of AR and two other children. Mother also appeals a limited judgment in a paternity proceeding involving Jeffery Larkins, another husband to mother.1 Finally, mother appeals the court’s order denying her motion under ORCP 71 to set aside the dissolution judgment for lack of a valid marriage to Southard. Mother raises eight assignments of error. Assuming that her marriage to Southard was invalid, she challenges the court’s authority to have awarded custody as in an ordinary dissolution. She challenges the paternity court’s refusal to decide AR’s custody. On the merits, she challenges the award to Southard of custody of three children — a decision we will not discuss at length.

We conclude, first, that mother did not properly present at trial the issue she now presents on appeal as to the validity of the Southard marriage and, second, that the court had authority, and certainly jurisdiction, to dissolve the marriage and to make its custody determination. On this record, the Southard marriage and the dissolution judgment were not void. We reject without written discussion mother’s challenge to the limited judgment of the paternity court and her other assignments of error as to the dissolution judgment and post-trial motion. We affirm.

Mother requests de novo review of the trial court’s custody determination. ORS 19.415(3). Although the parties’ history is complicated, these judicial proceedings themselves do not make this the type of exceptional case that warrants de novo review.2 Therefore, we decline to exercise de novo review. See ORAP 5.40(8)(c) (de novo review is appropriate in “exceptional cases”).

[92]*92We review for legal error the court’s authority to dissolve the marriage, and we “state the facts consistently with those found by the trial court to the extent that there is evidence to support them.” Nice v. Townley, 248 Or App 616, 618, 274 P3d 227 (2012); see also Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick, 248 Or App 539, 541 n 1, 273 P3d 361 (2012) (reviewing the facts consistently with the trial court’s express and implied findings).

The sequence of events began when, in 2001, mother married Southard. During their first marriage, they had two children, H and S. In 2006, the marriage was annulled, and custody of the two children was awarded to mother.

Mother married Larkins in June 2007, and they divorced in February 2008, while mother was pregnant. On her initiative, that dissolution judgment ordered that “[t]he presumption that [Larkins] is the father of Wife’s unborn child is rebutted and paternity is disestablished by this General Judgment.”

When mother gave birth to AR in April 2008, Southard was present. Mother falsely told the hospital staff that she and Southard were married. Southard “signed the documents that were handed to him, not realizing that [mother] was asserting that she was married to him.”3 As a result, he was listed as the father on AR’s birth certificate.

Mother remarried Larkins in August 2008. Mother remarried Southard in July 2009. Much later, mother filed an affidavit representing that the marriage certificate for the second Larkins marriage had not been recorded and that she believed “that the [second Larkins] marriage was never officialized.”4 In that affidavit, she explained that, at the time, “I did not believe [the second Larkins marriage] to be an official marriage.”

[93]*93In 2012, Southard filed a petition for dissolution of the marriage, seeking custody of all three children.5 Larkins petitioned to intervene, asking to be named AR’s legal father. The dissolution court ruled that AR’s paternity should be decided in a separate proceeding.

In 2013, the court entered a judgment of dissolution of the marriage. At the conclusion of trial, the court stated that, “ [biased on the evidence, this is *** a marriage I am dissolving.” The court determined, on the record then before it, that Southard was effectively AR’s legal father, although he was not AR’s biological father. The court awarded custody of the three children to Southard and parenting time to mother.

Several months later, mother filed a motion to set aside the dissolution judgment under ORCP 71. She argued that she was still married to Larkins at the time of her second marriage to Southard, that the Southard remarriage was void, and that the court lacked authority to dissolve the marriage or to determine custody of the children. Because she now deemed her marriage to Southard void, mother argued that the dissolution judgment was void. The court denied the motion.6

On appeal, mother argues, among others, two related assignments of error. In her fifth assignment, mother argues that the court erred in “finding the marriage of [the parties] was ‘valid’” and then proceeding to grant the parties a dissolution judgment with a custody determination. In her sixth assignment, she argues that, for the same reason, the court erred in denying her motion for relief from judgment. That is, because the second Southard marriage was allegedly void, the court lacked authority to have acted. [94]*94She asks that the dissolution judgment be set aside. We first address mother’s contention that the Southard marriage was invalid and, second, mother’s contention that the court lacked authority, resulting in a void judgment.

To the extent that mother assails the validity of the second Southard marriage, her argument comes too late, because she did not preserve the issue or develop the record. Mother complains that the trial court “never addressed *** [the issue of] the validity of the marriage.” That is so because mother did not ask the court to make such a ruling. Although mother had pleaded in response to the petition for dissolution that the marriage between mother and Southard was void because her second marriage to Larkins had not been dissolved, her response to the petition did not seek a declaratory ruling nor an annulment of a void marriage. Instead, her response concluded with a prayer that asked the court to dissolve the Southard marriage and award her custody of the children.

At trial, mother did not present the kind of case needed to challenge the validity of a prior marriage. In Davis v. Davis, 55 Or App 982, 986, 640 P2d 692, adh’d to on recons, 57 Or App 145, 643 P2d 1351 (1982), we held that:

“Tt is incumbent upon a party who asserts the invalidity of such a marriage, upon the grounds that one of the parties thereto has been formerly married, to allege and prove that the parties to the alleged former marriage were eligible to consummate the same, and that the spouse of such former marriage is still living; that the first marriage has not been dissolved by divorce or by death of one of the parties.’”

(Emphasis added.) On reconsideration, we added that, in the absence of an express stipulation that a prior marriage was valid, the court will not extend the effect of any other stipulation “beyond the facts expressly stipulated.” Davis v. Davis, 57 Or App 145, 148, 643 P2d 1351 (1982). (Emphasis in original.)

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
364 P.3d 1006, 275 Or. App. 89, 2015 Ore. App. LEXIS 1417, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/larkins-v-larkins-orctapp-2015.