By Jonathan B. Amarilio
Partner, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
Partner, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP
“We find that
supreme court jurisprudence requires us to depart from the weight of First
District authority.” In re Marriage ofTeymour, 2017 IL App (1st) 161091, ¶ 1.
To any practitioner of the law, these words should set off alarm bells
and garner attention, and In re Marriage
of Fouad Teymour, 2017 IL App (1st) 161091, provides no exception to that
rule.
Teymour concerns appeals from trial court orders
resolving several postdissolution matters, specifically between Fouad Teymour
and his ex-wife Hala Mostafa. The underlying facts are unremarkable. Fouad and
Hala’s marriage was dissolved and he was ordered to pay maintenance. Several
years later, Hala filed a petition to extend the length of the payment period,
for unpaid child support, and for attorney fees and costs. Fouad, in turn,
sought a reduction of maintenance. Both sides sought discovery sanctions. The trial
court entered an order continuing maintenance, found Fouad in indirect civil
contempt (although it declined to impose a penalty in conjunction therewith),
and granted Hala leave to file petitions for attorney fees, costs and sanctions
on several bases, denying Fouad’s reciprocal requests.
Fouad filed a
notice of appeal challenging his continued maintenance obligations, the
imposition of sanctions, the contempt finding, and the trial court’s failure to
dismiss Hala’s request for child support. Hala’s petitions for attorney fees
and—possibly—her request for child support (this latter point was apparently
unclear from the record) remained pending; however, the trial court did not
enter a Rule 304(a) finding.
On appeal, the
First District was confronted with a surprisingly unresolved issue: whether
unrelated, pending postdissolution matters constitute separate “claims” or
separate “actions” for purposes of establishing jurisdiction under Rule 304(a).
The reviewing court explained that the appellate districts were split on this
question, further explaining that if each pending, unrelated matter constitutes
a separate “claim” in the same action, a Rule 304(a) finding is required to
appeal from an order disposing of only one such claim. Whereas if each pending
and unrelated matter constitutes a separate “action,” an order disposing of
only one such action is final and appealable under Rule 301—regardless of the
status of other, still pending, actions. And of course, if the latter were
true, a party would also have to file a notice of appeal within 30 days of the
relevant trial court decision or lose the right to appeal it forever.
Criticizing as
imprecise the reasoning adopted in several appellate and supreme court decisions
addressing closely related issues, and observing that the supreme court’s 2009
decision In re Marriage of Gutman,
232 Ill. 2d 145 “only added fuel to the jurisdictional fire” (a statement
seemingly meant to draw attention), the court here broke with First District
precedent and adopted the position taken by the Second and Fourth Districts to
find that separate and unrelated postdissolution matters present separate
claims, not separate actions, and therefore a Rule 304(a) finding is required
where only one of several pending postdissolution petitions has been resolved. Recognizing
the fairly unique nature of postdissolution proceedings, the court stated that
“[w]here a party files one postdissolution petition, several more are likely to
follow,” and any different rule would only encourage unmanageable piecemeal
litigation. Teymour, 2017 IL App
(1st) 161091, ¶ 39.
Applying that
holding to the facts presented, the court found that, even if it assumed the
child support request was not pending when the notice of appeal was filed, the
several attorney fee petitions (often considered ancillary in other contexts)
were still pending. Because the trial court did not make a Rule 304(a) finding,
the contempt and sanctions orders were not yet appealable, and the court found
it lacked jurisdiction to consider them.
Unless and until
the Supreme Court wades into this matter directly, Teymour is a must read opinion for all family law practitioners and
for appellate lawyers handling family-law appeals.
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