The concurrent-jurisdiction overlap between juvenile and circuit courts is always good for tangled procedural situations and lengthy appellate-court analyses. In one of those cases in which the circuit court grants a divorce saying that it leaves the matters of child custody, child support and alimony alone so that the juvenile court can handle them, the Court of Appeals has a number of instructive things to say. In Ipsen v. Moxley, ___ Va. App. ___, ___ S.E.2d ___, 21 VLW 1392 (4/10/07), it was held that the support order from the juvenile court that was shoved aside when divorce proceedings were filed persisted. On this appeal the Court of Appeals held that the nonsuit of the divorce case “restores authority” to the JDR court support order that existed before the divorce case was filed.
True, §20-79 says that district court jurisdiction ceases and a support order from the JDR court becomes “inoperative” when a circuit court enters its own pendente lite support order, but it does not end permanently, and can be revived by a nonsuit of the divorce proceedings. A voluntary nonsuit returns the parties to the status quo and operation of the support order is automatically resumed, by operation of law, when that happens. Before the husband’s nonsuit, the wife had obtained a circuit court pendente lite order, but that expired as being only temporary, and tied to the pendency of the underlying action. Nonsuits, under §8.01-380, leave the situation as if the suit had never been filed. The Court of Appeals has already ruled in prior cases that when a juvenile court loses jurisdiction to a circuit court under the concurrent jurisdiction statute, it gets it back again and the authority of prior lower-court orders is “resumed.” The entry of a district court order over support after the JDR court had already done one created only a “temporary suspension” of juvenile court jurisdiction over that matter. However, if the circuit court had in fact issued a permanent final support order, that would have killed off the juvenile court support order, the Court of Appeals explains.