Opinion ID: 1208274
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the nunc pro tunc relief sought by the wife

Text: Orders nunc pro tunc are designed neither to bring into the record what a court might or should have done nor what it might or should have intended to do. The function of a nunc pro tunc entry is to amend a judgment to make it speak the truth about what actually transpired or was considered and adjudged. [7] Nunc pro tunc relief is limited to supplying inadvertent clerical omission and correcting facial mistakes in recording judicial acts that actually took place. [8] In short, a nunc pro tunc order can and will place of record what was actually decided by the court but was incorrectly recorded. The device may neither be invoked as a vehicle to review a judgment (or to excise legal errors found in it) nor as a means to enter a different judgments. [9] The wife's quest for a nunc pro tunc correction of the divorce decree is to make it reflect the parties' intent that the alimony installments would begin December 15, 1979 (the first month after the divorce), rather than June 15, 1979 (the date stated in the decree). The divorce decree  which had been prepared by the wife's lawyer, was signed by the parties and their counsel and then submitted for the trial judge's approval  apparently failed to embody this element of their agreement. The wife concedes that she knew the date was wrong when she signed the decree and mailed it to her counsel. She assumed that either her lawyer or the trial judge would correct the date. It is undisputed that a copy of the decree was mailed to her shortly after its entry. This appeal clearly does not present a case of clerical omission in the judgment actually given. The trial judge signed the agreed document presented to him for approval, which had been prepared by the wife's lawyer and bore the signatures of both parties and their counsel. He changed only the date appearing in the first line of the text (from June 8, 1979 to November 27, 1979) to reflect the time the cause came before him for adjudication. [10] The recorded decree speaks the truth as to what was actually decided on November 27, 1979. We hence hold that the wife clearly advanced no legally tenable grounds for nunc pro tunc relief from a decree clause that could be regarded as incorrectly reflecting an actual adjudication.