08/12/2026
🏛️⚖️ 15 YEARS OF PRACTICE. MY FIRST APPEAL. A WIN.
After 15 years of practicing law and fighting for clients in the trial courts, I made a decision:
When the other side appealed a ruling we fought for and won, I was going to defend that victory myself.
I stepped into appellate practice for the first time—not as appellate co-counsel, but as counsel for the Appellee, defending the result we had secured for our client in the trial court.
Today, the Fourth District Court of Appeal issued its opinion.
And Affordable Law Center prevailed on the central custody issues we defended.
The case presented an important interstate family-law question involving children who had relocated from Florida to North Carolina.
The trial court determined that North Carolina was the more appropriate forum for the custody-related proceedings. The Former Husband appealed that ruling, seeking to keep those issues in Florida.
We defended the trial court’s decision—and the Fourth DCA affirmed it.
The appellate court rejected the Former Husband’s arguments seeking reversal of the transfer of jurisdiction over:
⚖️ Child custody
⚖️ Timesharing
⚖️ Parental decision-making
⚖️ Parental responsibility
The Court also addressed an important, separate question:
If custody jurisdiction moves to another state, does child-support jurisdiction automatically go with it?
The Fourth DCA held that it does not.
Custody jurisdiction and child-support jurisdiction are governed by separate statutory schemes. Because the Former Husband continued to reside in Florida, Florida retained continuing, exclusive jurisdiction over modification of child support.
The Court therefore affirmed the transfer of the custody-related matters to North Carolina, while reversing in part and directing the trial court to amend its order to expressly retain Florida’s jurisdiction over child-support modification.
And what makes this opinion particularly meaningful is that the Fourth DCA specifically noted that its research had not identified a Florida case directly addressing whether the authority to transfer custody-modification jurisdiction also included the authority to transfer child-support-modification jurisdiction.
Custody can leave Florida while child support stays.
For me, though, this decision represents something even bigger.
After 15 years of practicing law, I took on my first appeal because I believed in the result we had obtained for our client and was willing to defend it at the next level.
Today, I get to say:
We defended our trial-court victory.
We prevailed on appeal.
And Affordable Law Center officially has its first appellate victory. 🏆⚖️
There is something incredibly special about seeing your name—and the firm you built—in a District Court of Appeal opinion for the very first time.
Jacqueline Spence, Esq.
Counsel for Appellee
Affordable Law Center, PLLC
Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. But we sure as he*l fight!
