Can you appeal a divorce?
What happens if I don’t like the decision that the judge made in my Florida divorce case? Can I appeal the decision? Can you appeal a divorce?
Yes, as a general proposition you can appeal the judge’s decision to the Florida District Court of Appeal that covers your geographic area. Appeals however are a very complicated, lengthy, expensive process. There has to be a very good reason from a financial standpoint to appeal the decision. For example, you’re not going to want to spend thousands of dollars on an appeal if the issue you don’t like the decision if it pertains to a dispute that concerns only $1000.00.
Divorce Appeal Attorney
To successfully bring an appeal, your divorce appeal attorney needs to identify what particular mistake the judge made in the case. For example, the judge may have refused to allow certain documents or testimony to come into evidence. Judges have great leeway in making decision during a trial, but there are rules. If the appeals court determines that the judge substantially violated one of these rules to the prejudice of the party, the appeals court could send the case back to the trial court for re-determination, or the appeals court could reverse the judge’s decision and substitute their own decision. Normally the appeals court is not going to re weigh/re-evaluate the evidence brought before the trial court. Unless the appeals court determines for example that the trial judge’s decision on which party was telling the truth on a particular topic was highly questionable, the trial judge is going to have the final say. But the appeals court may determine for example that the trial judge had insufficient proof to come to the particular decision that they did. Yet, appeals courts do not reverse the decision of the trial judge based on minor errors, generally speaking. If the trial judge applied the wrong law, or misinterpreted the law, that would be a substantial reason to reverse the trial judge’s decision.
Can you appeal a divorce?
Appeals are expensive because it takes the lawyer a tremendous amount of time to read through the transcript of the trial or other proceedings being appealed. Note that the appellate lawyer is not always the lawyer that appeared at the trial court proceedings. Many appeals are done by appellate specialists. And usually, you will not be able to appeal if there was no court reporter or official recording of the trial court proceedings, where every word of the proceeding was taken down such that a transcript could be created.
The appeal lawyer has to draw up the appeal documents, which are complicated. The lawyer must be very precise in the description to the appeals court of what happened in the trial court because the appeal court judges were not present during the trial. Appeals take many, many months. The transcript of the trial or other proceeding that you want to appeal will be expensive typically, depending on the length of the proceedings that are being appealed. Lawyers will charge for their time, and it is possible that one party will have to pay the other parties’ attorney fees regarding the appeal under certain circumstances. So of course the decision to appeal a judge’s ruling must be weighed very carefully. There are deadlines for filing an appeal, and other procedures that must be followed or the right to appeal could be waived.