T. M.
v.
DEPT. OF CHILDREN & FAMILIES
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A trial court's termination of parental rights is affirmed despite incorrect statutory citations in the written judgment when the court correctly addressed the substance of each statutory ground and made appropriate factual findings.
[1] Scrivener's errors in statutory citations within a parental rights termination judgment do not require reversal when the trial court correctly addressed the substance of…
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Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence“Correcting these scrivener's errors has no substantive effect because the trial court correctly addressed the substance of each statutory ground and made the appropriate factual findings.”
Court's explanation for why the incorrect citations do not warrant reversal
The trial court terminated the Mother's parental rights based on four grounds alleged in the termination petition. The written judgment cited incorrec…
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Department of Children and Families. Dwight O. Slater of Cohn Slater, P.A., Tallahassee; and Thomasina F. Moore, Statewide Guardian ad Litem Office, Tallahassee, for Appellee Guardian ad Litem Program.
- 2 - ROTHSTEIN-YOUAKIM, Judge. T.M. (the Mother) appeals the final judgment terminating her parental rights.
We affirm in all respects but remand for the trial court to correct certain scrivener's errors in the written judgment. The Mother pointed out the errors as an issue in her initial brief, and the Guardian ad Litem Program conceded that the proper remedy is to remand for correction.
The trial court terminated the Mother's parental rights based on four of the grounds alleged in the petition seeking termination. Despite correctly addressing the substance of each statutory ground, however, the written judgment cites the incorrect subsections for three of the grounds. The citation to section 39.806(1)(b), Florida Statutes (2018), should be corrected to section 39.806(1)(e)(2); the citation to section 39.806(1)(c) should be corrected to section 39.806(1)(f); and the citation to section 39.806(1)(d) should be corrected to section 39.806(1)(e)(3).
Correcting these scrivener's errors has no substantive effect because the trial court correctly addressed the substance of each statutory ground and made the appropriate factual findings. See Tunstall v. Gonzalez-Tunstall, 278 So. 3d 254, 254 (Fla. 2d DCA 2019).
Accordingly, we affirm and remand only for the correction of the scrivener's errors. See Rodriguez v. State, 223 So. 3d 1053, 1054-55 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017).
Affirmed and remanded with instructions. CASANUEVA and KELLY, JJ., Concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Authorities Cited
- Rodriguez v. State, 223 So. 3d 1053 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017)
- Tunstall v. Gonzalez-Tunstall (Fla. 2d DCA 2019)