Peo in Interest of E.Q

Citations

• 2020 COA 118

Syllabus

The juvenile court adjudicated the children dependent and neglected based on the parties' stipulation. Two months later, the parties reached a stipulation concerning parental responsibilities for the children. As pertinent here, the stipulation provided that mother would be the children's custodian and have sole decision-making responsibilities and the domestic relations court would determine child support. Mother filed a motion asking the juvenile court to order father to release his prior three months of Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) benefits to her. Father filed a written objection to the motion. The juvenile court held a hearing and found it had jurisdiction to consider child support in a dependency and neglect proceeding. It ordered father to turn over his previous three months of SSDI benefits to mother and to restore mother as the payee of his benefits until further order of the court. On appeal, father argued that the juvenile court lacked jurisdiction to issue the child support order addressing his SSDI benefits because it had already ended the case by accepting the parties' stipulation to defer child support to the domestic court. The Children's Code expressly authorizes a juvenile court to enter an order addressing child support when it maintains jurisdiction in a case involving a child who is dependent and neglected and no child custody action or action for the allocation of parental responsibilities concerning the same child is pending in a district court. Here, although mother initiated a separate domestic relations proceeding, no party asserted that a custody or parental responsibilities action was pending in that case. Consequently, the domestic relations proceeding did not affect the juvenile court's jurisdiction to determine child support. Further, the record shows that the court considered both mother's motion to release father's SSDI benefits and the parties' request for the court to approve their stipulation at the same time, and it g