Wethington v. Wethington

Citations

• 223 Conn. App. 715

Syllabus

The defendant appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court dissolving his marriage to the plaintiff and from certain orders finding him in contempt. The plaintiff commenced the dissolution action in November, 2019, and thereafter filed several motions for contempt pen- dente lite alleging, inter alia, that the defendant had violated the auto- matic orders through his financial transactions in October, 2019. During the pendency of the action, the parties executed a stipulation pendente lite providing, inter alia, that, following the sale of the marital residence, the defendant would make weekly support payments to the plaintiff and would also place $46,000 in escrow for the sole benefit of the plaintiff. The plaintiff alleged in a separate contempt motion that the defendant had failed to make all of the agreed upon support payments. In dissolving the marriage, the court found that the primary causes of the breakdown of the marriage were the defendant's excessive drinking and abusive behavior toward the plaintiff and that the defendant was not credible. The court granted, inter alia, several of the plaintiff's motions for contempt and summarily denied the defendant's postjudg- ment motions to reargue. Held: 1. The trial court improperly granted certain of the plaintiff's motions for contempt insofar as the court adjudicated the defendant in contempt of the automatic orders for his conduct prior to the effective date of those automatic orders and abused its discretion in denying the defen- dant's related motion to reargue: as a matter of law, the defendant could not be adjudicated in contempt of the automatic orders for his actions in October, 2019, as, pursuant to the clear and unambiguous language of our rule of practice (§ 25-5), the defendant was not subject to the automatic orders until they had been served on him, through counsel, in November, 2019; accordingly, the case was remanded with direction to grant the defendant's motion to reargue and to