Case Name: Marsha Clare BROWN, Appellant, v. Kermit Marlin BROWN, Appellee
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1981-06-22
Citations: 399 So. 2d 1083
Docket Number: No. XX-65
Parties: Marsha Clare BROWN, Appellant, v. Kermit Marlin BROWN, Appellee.
Judges: MILLS, C. J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 399
Pages: 1083–1086

Head Matter:
Marsha Clare BROWN, Appellant, v. Kermit Marlin BROWN, Appellee.
No. XX-65.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.
June 22, 1981.
John Paul Howard, Jacksonville, for appellant.
Robert I. Scanlan, Tallahassee, for appel-lee.

Opinion:
ROBERT P. SMITH, Judge.
We find no error in the circuit court's rulings on appellant's "petition for judgment of contempt and motion for modification of final judgment of divorce." The facts of the case are as stated in Judge Wentworth's concurring and dissenting opinion, although we should note that appellant made no application to reduce the alleged arrearages to judgment except by an order of contempt, which the full panel agrees the circuit court properly denied. If the record contained a proper demand for a judgment of arrearages, we should be obliged to sustain the circuit court's denial of that relief because of the undisputed testimony that appellant bargained for and agreed to the termination of child support payments, during the period in question, in exchange for appellee's agreement to "stop calling and stop bothering her about seeing the child." See Phillips v. Adams, 339 So.2d 665 (Fla.4th DCA 1976). Nor do we think the court can be held to have erred in granting appellee's motion to dismiss the petition for modification and increase of the resumed child support payments, after appellant rested her case on that issue without any effort to prove the child's increased need and appellee's increased ability to pay. Section 61.14(1), Florida Statutes (1979). The trial court was required to rule on the issues as they were presented by counsel; and, having correctly ruled that the evidence in support of modification was insufficient at the close of appellant's case, the court cannot be held in error for declining to reopen that issue based on evidence later received on the contempt issue.
AFFIRMED.
MILLS, C. J., concurs.
WENTWORTH, J., concurs and dissents, with opinion.