When is an Appeal Needed for a Seattle Divorce?
If your divorce final orders are based on a court ruling after trial, then you may be able to appeal the result. An appeal is a request for a reviewing court (generally the Court of Appeals) to review the ruling for legal errors. On the other hand, you generally cannot appeal an agreed divorce settlement.
Typically the Court of Appeals does not review the entire divorce outcome, but rather only the points that you ask it to review in your appeal. Divorces cover many different issues and you may feel that the court ruled correctly on most issues, but was in error on one or two. The error could be in interpretation of the law, or could be in exceeding the range of discretionary options that the court is empowered with.
Because the facts of every case are different, and the directions to the trial court are primarily to achieve a “fair and equitable” result, the court has a lot of discretion in determining what is fair and equitable. For instance, there may be facts justifying a 60/40 property division because of other factors like future income impacting one party or the other. On the other hand, on appeal it might be find that a 90/10 property division was outside the range of the court’s reasonable options given all of the factors involved.
Meet Michelle Danley: Our Seattle Divorce Appeal Attorney
Michelle Danley is the attorney at Seattle Divorce Services who handles appeals. We were very fortunate to have her join us here, bringing her 10 year background in appellate work to supplement the other divorce related services we offer.
If you feel that the court may have made crucial mistakes in your divorce, you can schedule a consultation with Ms. Danley to discuss what happened, what mistakes you believe where made, and what the potential for an appeal might be.
You do need to be aware that there are time limits on filing an appeal, generally 30 days from the date of entry of the final orders. This means that if you are considering an appeal, talk to your current attorney as well as a Seattle divorce appeals lawyer like Ms. Danley as soon as possible after the divorce is final.
If you would like to schedule an appointment to discuss a potential appeal, or any other divorce related matters, give us a call at 206-784-3049 or use our appointment request form. Talk to you soon!