Court Opinion

ID: 9732406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:19:22.444894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:27.536147
License: Public Domain

Carter, J.,
dissenting.
The appeal in this case was from an order of the trial *773court modifying the visitation rights of the husband. The trial court gave the husband the authority to fix the times and places for exercising visitation rights, taxed the costs to the wife, and denied the wife an attorney’s fee, all of which is assigned as error. This court holds, in effect, that the court was in error in not fixing specifically the visitation rights of the husband. With this portion of the opinion, I agree.
The costs of this appeal should be taxed against the husband including a reasonable attorney’s fee for services rendered in this court. Considering the issues involved on appeal, I submit that a reasonable attorney’s fee does not exceed the amount of $250 and I respectfully dissent from the allowance of $500 for services rendered in this court.
The wife assigns as error the taxing of costs to the wife in the trial court and the failure to allow the wife an attorney’s fee in that court. I point out that the issues in the trial court are more detailed and extensive than they are on this appeal. The taxing of an attorney’s fee for services rendered in the trial court is, in the first instance, in that court and not here. If the trial court erred in not fixing an attorney’s fee for the wife, the case should be reversed and remanded to the trial court to have such attorney’s fee taxed as costs in that court. It is the trial court and not this court that has the facts and means of determining a reasonable attorney’s fee for services rendered in that court. It is true that this court has in the past, improvidently I think, allowed attorney’s fees in the trial court for services in that court without the benefit of that court’s judgment as to the allowance to be made. The taking of the allowance out of the hands of the trial court and substituting our judgment for that of the trial court on a record which may or may not be adequate as to all that has occurred in the trial court, including previous allowances.made, can well result in a hit or miss allowance that is unfair and unreasonable. I submit that an *774excessive attorney’s fee should not be allowed in this court on the theory that we are making an allowance for services rendered in both the trial court and in this court.
For the foregoing reasons, I do not concur with the allowance of a $500 attorney’s fee for services rendered in this court.