CARLOS CRUZ v. KAREN MATOS

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA
FOURTH DISTRICT
CARLOS CRUZ,
Appellant,
v.
KAREN MATOS,
Appellee.
No. 4D22-700
[February 8, 2023]
Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, St.
Lucie County; Michael C. Heisey, Judge; L.T. Case No. 562016DR000207.
Chet E. Weinbaum of Law Office of Chet E. Weinbaum, Fort Pierce, for
appellant.
No appearance for appellee.
FORST, J.
Appellant Carlos Cruz (“former husband”) appeals the trial court’s final
judgment granting Appellee Karen Matos’s (“former wife”) motion for civil
contempt and enforcement for non-payment of alimony. Former husband
argues the trial court erred when it granted relief that was not requested
by either party. Specifically, the trial court calculated former husband’s
alimony arrearage to include pre-October 2020 payments, despite the
principal issue raised in former wife’s motion being whether former
husband was required to pay alimony from October 2020 to January 7,
2021. We agree with former husband and reverse.
Background
The parties entered into a marriage settlement agreement wherein
former husband agreed to pay former wife permanent alimony until such
time as former wife remarried. Former husband was to pay $750 in
alimony per month, or $173.08 per week. These alimony payments began
on December 9, 2016, and terminated when former wife remarried on
January 7, 2021.
After her remarriage, former wife filed a motion for civil contempt and
enforcement for nonpayment of alimony, arguing former husband had
“NOT ma[de] full Alimony payments [from] October 2020 through January
2021.” Former husband admitted he had not paid alimony from October
2020 to January 2021, arguing that a material hardship precluded him
from paying alimony for those months.
At a hearing on the motion, the parties focused on former husband’s
material hardship claim, which former husband does not raise on appeal.
Former wife cross-examined former husband, specifically asking him “why
[he] cannot make a payment that you owe me for two and a half months
behind.” Former wife then stated in closing:
I respectfully request . . . this Court . . . [to] grant the three
months that [ex-Husband] owe [sic] me as alimony. . . . I am
respectfully requesting that [this Court] grant the motion of
contempt and he have to pay the alimony owed to me from
October to January 7th.
(emphasis added).
During the hearing, the parties had allowed the trial court to take
judicial notice of the marriage settlement case. Using the arrearage
affidavit from the marriage settlement case, the trial court determined that
there were underpaid or unpaid contributions from December 9, 2016, to
October 2020. The trial court ultimately entered final judgment against
former husband and awarded former wife $6,158.64, reflecting underpaid
or unpaid alimony contributions from December 9, 2016 to January 7,
2021. This appeal followed.
Analysis
“It is well-settled that a trial court violates due process and commits
reversible error when it grants a party relief that the party did not request.”
Booth v. Hicks, 301 So. 3d 369, 370 (Fla. 2d DCA 2020). “Generally,
‘courts are not authorized to grant relief not requested in the pleadings.’”
Fed. Home Loan Mortg. Corp. v. Beekman, 174 So. 3d 472, 475 (Fla. 4th
DCA 2015) (quoting Cardinal Inv. Grp., Inc. v. Giles, 813 So. 2d 262, 263
(Fla. 4th DCA 2002)); see also Wallace v. Wallace, 605 So. 2d 504, 505
(Fla. 4th DCA 1992) (relief neither requested in the pleadings nor
supported by evidence at the hearing cannot be awarded).
In the instant case, former wife explicitly requested, in her motion and
in her closing argument at the hearing on that motion, that the court order
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former husband to compensate her for the unpaid alimony for the period
of October 2020 to January 7, 2021. It was undisputed that former
husband had not made alimony payments during that timeframe. Former
wife neither claimed nor sought unpaid alimony for any period prior to
October 2020, either in her motion or at the hearing on her motion.
Nonetheless, the trial court, on its own initiative, took judicial notice of
former husband’s alimony payment history and ordered former husband
to compensate former wife for the difference in alimony owed and alimony
paid during the entirety of the period between December 9, 2016 and
January 7, 2021.
By including pre-October 2020 alimony obligations in its calculation,
the trial court’s award went beyond what was requested in the pleadings.
And because the pre-October 2020 amount of alimony due was raised by
the trial court in its final judgment on its own initiative, it was not tried by
consent of the parties. The trial court erred when it granted this relief.
Conclusion
The trial court erred in going beyond the relief requested by former wife.
We thus reverse the final judgment and remand this case for entry of an
amended supplemental final judgment, limiting “the balance of the
alimony” due to the amount unpaid for the period from October 1, 2020 to
January 7, 2021.
Reversed and remanded with instructions.
WARNER and CIKLIN, JJ., concur.
* * *
Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.
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