Title: Flores v. Otis

State: maine

Issuer: Maine Supreme Court

Document:

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT 
 
 
 
     
    Reporter of Decisions 
Decision: 
2015 ME 132 
Docket: 
Yor-15-79 
Submitted 
  On Briefs: 
September 28, 2015 
Decided: 
October 15, 2015 
 
Panel: 
SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, and HUMPHREY, JJ. 
 
 
GENEVIEVE FLORES 
 
v. 
 
HAZEN OTIS 
 
 
PER CURIAM 
[¶1]  Genevieve Flores appeals from a judgment of the District Court 
(Springvale, Janelle, J.) granting her motion to modify a parental rights and 
responsibilities order in part, but leaving unchanged her obligation to pay Hazen 
Otis $100 per week in child support for their minor daughter.  Flores contends that 
the court miscalculated the child support due.  We dismiss the appeal as untimely 
filed. 
I.  BACKGROUND 
 
[¶2]  In August 2010, Flores filed a complaint for determination of parental 
rights and responsibilities concerning the parties’ daughter.  In a series of orders 
that followed, Otis was awarded sole parental rights and responsibilities 
concerning the child, and Flores was ordered to pay Otis $170 per week in child 
 
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support.  In February 2012, Flores filed a motion to modify the parental rights and 
responsibilities judgment, requesting, inter alia, a recalculation of child support.  
Pending a hearing on the motion to modify, and by agreement, the court reduced 
Flores’s child support obligation to $100 per week. 
 
[¶3]  Following 
a 
hearing, the court issued an order dated 
September 5, 2013, that left in place Flores’s $100 weekly child support obligation.  
In its order, the court noted that “[a]t the request of both counsel, the Court kept 
the record open until September 4, 2013 to allow counsel to submit proposed 
orders as well as updated child support worksheets and orders.  Notwithstanding 
their request, neither counsel submitted updated proposed orders or updated child 
support worksheets and child support orders.” 
 
[¶4]  Flores moved for additional findings of fact and conclusions of law 
pursuant to M.R. Civ. P. 52(b).  The court made additional findings, dated 
January 23, 2014, and entered in the docket on January 29, 2014.  Concerning the 
issue of child support, the court said: 
In its September 5, 2013 Order the Court explained that it left in place 
its . . . Child Support Order because counsel failed to submit updated 
Child Support Affidavits.  Prior to entering the Courtroom, Counsel, 
in chambers, had represented to the Court that they would address the 
issue of child support by submitting updated child support affidavits 
for the Court’s consideration.  They did not.  The Court continues to 
be willing to re-address child support if both parties submit, within 
15 days of the docketing of these findings, updated Child Support 
Affidavits as previously discussed. 
 
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Accordingly, in order to have the court reconsider her child support obligation, 
Flores’s updated child support affidavit was due by February 13, 2014. 
 
[¶5]  On February 20, 2014, one week after the court’s deadline, Flores’s 
attorney filed a letter dated February 18, 2014.  The letter did not include an 
updated child support affidavit as directed by the court; rather, it attached a 
proposed order that “[r]eferenced . . . child support worksheets and affidavits that 
were admitted at the August 27, 2013 hearing by Ms. Flores.”  Thus, Flores 
directed the court’s attention to affidavits that predated both the court’s 
September 5, 2013, order and its additional findings of fact. 
 
[¶6]  In August 2014 and November 2014, Flores’s attorneys filed letters 
with the court contending that the issue of child support was still pending a 
decision.  On January 14, 2015, the court wrote on the August 2014 letter: 
“Reconsideration denied.” 
 
[¶7]  On February 11, 2015, Flores filed a notice of appeal stating that she 
was appealing “from the judgment, order or ruling entered in this proceeding on 
September 5, 2013.” 
II.  DISCUSSION 
 
[¶8]  Pursuant to M.R. App. P. 2(b)(3), “[t]he time within which an appeal 
may be taken in a civil case shall be 21 days after entry of the judgment or order 
appealed from.”  The twenty-one-day period begins anew “from the entry of an 
 
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order . . . granting or denying . . . a motion under M.R. Civ. P. 52(b) to amend or 
make additional findings of fact.”  Id. 
 
[¶9]  Here, the operative event from which to calculate the twenty-one-day 
appeal period is the docketing of the court’s additional findings on 
January 29, 2014, meaning that Flores had until February 19, 2014, to notice her 
appeal.1  Because she did not do so until February 11, 2015, almost a full year after 
the deadline, her appeal is untimely and must be dismissed.  See Collins v. Dep’t of 
Corr., 2015 ME 112, ¶ 10, --- A.3d --- (“Strict compliance with the time limits of 
M.R. App. P. 2(b) . . . is a prerequisite to the Law Court entertaining an appeal.” 
(alteration in original) (quotation marks omitted)). 
 
[¶10]  Flores points to the February, August, and November 2014 letters 
from her attorneys, as well as the court’s “[r]econsideration denied” notation on the 
August letter, as relevant events occurring after the court’s entry of additional 
findings.  They are not, however, relevant to the calculation of the deadline for 
filing her notice of appeal.  There was no motion to reconsider pending after the 
additional findings were docketed, making the court’s notation no more than a 
shorthand way of saying that it would not revisit the February 13, 2014, deadline 
that Flores had missed for filing an updated child support affidavit.  Furthermore, a 
                                         
1  By rule, “[a] judgment or order is entered within the meaning of [M.R. App. P. 2] when it is entered 
in the docket.”  M.R. App. P. 2(b)(1). 
 
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letter written to the court is not the equivalent of a pleading or a motion, and 
therefore it carries no weight in calculating or tolling time periods set forth in the 
rules.2  See M.R. Civ. P. 7. 
The entry is: 
Appeal dismissed. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
On the briefs: 
 
 
Genevieve Flores, appellant pro se 
 
Wendy Moulton Starkey, Esq., Rose Law, LLC, York, for 
appellee Hazen Otis 
 
 
 
Springvale District Court docket number FM-2010-350 
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY 
                                         
2  Even if it were otherwise, the first letter was filed on February 20, 2014, a day after the deadline for 
Flores to notice her appeal.