Father filed for dissolution on October 26, 2005. On March 30, 2006, the court entered temporary orders requiring Father to pay $7,500 in combined child support and spousal maintenance (collectively “family support”) beginning April 1, 2006.
The family court stated that this order was entered “without prejudice to either party’s position at the time of trial to request that any sums ordered to be paid be increased or decreased, or that there be an adjustment if one party has overpaid or underpaid.”
Father paid the required monthly payments from April through September 2006. In
September, Father moved for modification of support. The court waited until trial to rule on Father’s motion. The trial was held on May 1, 2007. Father did not make payments to Mother in the time between filing his motion to modify and when the trial occurred.
Almost three months after the trial, the court entered its decree. Pertinent to this appeal, the court found Father was unable to make the $7,500 per month payments and reduced his support obligation to $1,826.34 per month. The court then reallocated his previous payments to begin December 1, 2005 (the first day of the month following service of the petition for dissolution).
Mother appealed.
Family court authority to modify temporary orders
On appeal, Mother argued the trial court did not have authority to reduce the temporary orders for spousal maintenance and child support and did not explicitly find good cause for reducing Father’s payments.
Mother’s arguments derived from A.R.S. § 25-327, which at the time stated:
Except as otherwise provided in § 25-317, subsections F and G, the provisions of any decree respecting maintenance or support may be modified or terminated only on a showing of changed circumstances that are substantial and continuing except as to any amount that may have accrued as an arrearage before the date of notice of the motion or order to show cause to modify or terminate.
The Court of Appeals found this argument misplaced as the plain language of the statute applied only to “provisions of any decree.” The term decree refers to final orders only. The Court of Appeals emphasized that temporary orders are not decrees, so this statute did not apply.
At the time, A.R.S. § 25-315 controlled temporary orders. That statute did not impose any limitation on the court’s authority to modify temporary family support nor any requirement for the court to explicitly find good cause to modify temporary support. The current version of that statute is A.R.S. § 25-316.
Conclusion
By law, temporary orders do not prejudice final rights of parties. This means that temporary orders can be adjusted or modified as part of a subsequent decree. So if your judge enters temporary orders that you disagree with, it does not necessarily mean that this cannot be changed before final orders are entered. Still, temporary orders can set the tone for the rest of the case so it is important to present your case as well as possible.