Opinion
G037912
5-29-2007
COUNTY OF ORANGE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. FRED SAMUEL SCHULTZ, Defendant and Appellant.
Law Offices of Mark J. Warfel and Mark J. Warfel for Defendant and Appellant. Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, and Mary Dahlberg, Deputy Attorney General.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Defendant Fred Samuel Schultz appeals from a postjudgment order retroactively increasing his child support obligation. Although this case has made quite a few trips to the trial court and once previously to this court, the issue raised in this appeal makes it unnecessary to recite all the procedural ins and outs. It is sufficient to note that on May 10, 2000, Temporary Judge Gale Hickman issued an order, based on a stipulation of the parties, providing for certain specified lump sum and periodic payments. In addition the order provided "[a]ll current child support orders and orders, including judgments, of child support arrearages, are set aside in consideration of the amount agreed in the preceding paragraph . . . ."
On September 28, 2006, on motion by plaintiff, Temporary Judge Craig Arthur declared the May 10, 2000 order void and ordered defendant to pay for retroactive child support. Defendant does not contest that the court had power to modify child support obligations prospectively but contends that it exceeded its powers by invalidating a prior final order made by another judge. He is right and plaintiff so concedes.
Code of Civil Procedure section 1008 "is the exclusive means for modifying, amending or revoking an order" and is "expressly jurisdictional." (Morite of California v. Superior Court (1993) 19 Cal.App.4th 485, 490.) Morite held that section 1008 "denies trial courts jurisdiction to reconsider, modify, amend or revoke their prior orders, whether final or interim, except pursuant to the procedure set forth" in the statute. (Id. at p. 487.) We need not expound on the various conditions imposed by section 1008 but merely note that the motion to revoke a prior order must be made before the same judge who issued the order and within ten days after service of notice of entry of the order. The order issued in 2000 was long final and cannot be revoked retroactively. (Cf. California Rules of Court, rule 3.1602.)
The order is reversed.
We concur:
SILLS, P. J.
ARONSON, J.