Hebrand v. Hebrand

Citations

• 216 Conn. App. 210

Syllabus

The defendant, whose marriage to the plaintiff previously had been dis- solved, appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court denying her motion to open and vacate a prior trial court's postjudgment modification of the plaintiff's alimony obligation. In 2017, the trial court modified the plaintiff's alimony obligation in accordance with a stipu- lated agreement the parties had filed with the court. The defendant did not file her motion to open until three years later, in 2020. On appeal, the defendant claimed, inter alia, that the court improperly concluded that she failed to prove that the plaintiff had fraudulently induced her to enter into the 2017 modification agreement and that the modification court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to consider the agreement because, inter alia, the plaintiff mislabeled the motion to modify the alimony obligation and failed to pay the required filing fee. Held: 1. The defendant's contention that the modification court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to consider and modify the plaintiff's alimony obliga- tion was meritless; none of the purported defects in the motion to modify would have deprived the court of jurisdiction, and the defendant failed to provide any authority to support her jurisdictional claims. 2. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the defendant's motion to open and vacate the modification court's alimony order: the defendant failed to establish that the plaintiff fraudulently induced her to join his efforts to modify the alimony obligation, as the evidence showed that the parties negotiated the agreement with the advice of their counsel and that the defendant chose to sign the agreement despite her counsel's advice not to do so. 3. The defendant's claims that the modification court improperly failed to find the occurrence of a substantial change in the parties' circumstances and to conform its order to those changes was unavailing; because the plaintiff failed to file her m