Subscribe to RSS feed

Lombardi v Van Duesen 2010


APPEAL FROM THE CLARK SUPERIOR COURT
The Honorable Jerry Jacobi, Judge
The Honorable William A. Dawkins, Magistrate
Cause No. 10D02-9804-DR-086
November 22, 2010
OPINION –FOR PUBLICATION

Mother and Father divorced, and Father moved to Illinois. Mother registered the child support order in Illinois, and she and Father subsequently consented to transfer jurisdiction of the child support issue to Illinois. The Illinois trial court modified Father‟s child support obligation. Years later, he asked that the Clark County, Indiana trial court reassume jurisdiction. The trial court did so. It found that the Illinois proceedings were a nullity because jurisdiction was never properly transferred and retroactively modified Father‟s support obligation to its original amount. The magistrate hearing the case also held a thirty-six-minute ex parte conference with Father‟s attorney and the prosecutor, explicitly barring Mother, who was pro se, from attending. We find the trial court‟s legal conclusions erroneous and the ex parte proceedings extremely troubling. Therefore, we reverse and remand with instructions that this matter be assigned to a different judicial officer.

We hereby order that upon remand, this case be reassigned to a different judicial officer. Moreover, if, as seems likely to happen, jurisdiction of the child support issue is transferred from DuPage County back to Clark County, we order that a judicial officer other than Magistrate Dawkins continue to handle the case.
The judgment of the trial court is reversed and remanded for further proceedings and to be reassigned to a different judicial officer.
RILEY, J., and BAILEY, J., concur.