A Carluzzo Rochkind & Smith note: Following is an excellent article by Virginia Lawyers Weekly. We did not handle this case, but it brings up important points your divorce lawyers should be familiar with. For more than 30 years our divorce lawyers in Manassas have helped clients with such matters in Prince William County, Fairfax County, Woodbridge, and throughout Northern Virginia. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment, please contact our law firm at (703) 361-0776.
Father’s challenge to support obligation is rejected
By Virginia Lawyers Weekly – 11/10/2025
Where father argued the circuit court should have ordered that mother’s support obligation apply retroactively to the date he served her with his petition to modify support, but the record did not include allow the documents necessary to allow the appellate court to address this issue, the circuit court’s order was affirmed.
Background
Paul Anthony Battista appeals the circuit court’s order determining child support obligations as between him and his former wife, Karen Merry Battista. Father argues the order is void because it does not contain the mother’s employment information. He also contends that the circuit court erred by not modifying the parties’ child support obligations retroactive to an earlier date in the proceedings. Finally, father suggests that the court’s order requiring him to pay $2,000 of the mother’s attorney’s fees as a sanction against him was an abuse of discretion.
Information
Father suggests that the March 2024 final order was void ab initio because it did not include “employment notice language” for the mother as required by Code § 20-60.3. He points to the statute’s references to the name, address and phone number of each parent’s employer. He suggests that the order could alternatively have included “a simple statement that [the mother] was unemployed, if [this was] true.”
Father does not argue that the circuit court lacked authority to enter the order. Rather, he argues simply that the order does not comply with Code § 20-60.3(4). Father’s claim does not implicate fraud, the circuit court’s subject matter jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, the court’s power to render the order or the mode of procedure it employed. So the alleged error, if proved, renders the circuit court’s order merely voidable, not void ab initio.
Further, the record does not establish that the omission of employment information for the mother was error. In fact, less than three weeks before the February 2024 modification hearing, father represented his belief that the mother was not employed, and he argued that income should be imputed to her.
And when the mother stipulated at that hearing to the child support calculations that father had prepared based on an imputation of income, father’s counsel agreed that his earlier motion for the mother’s employment records became moot. Father cannot approbate and reprobate by first accepting the mother’s agreement to stipulate to an imputed income based on her voluntary unemployment and then assigning error to the omission of the name and address of a nonexistent employer from the final order.
Contrary to father’s argument, this claim was in fact waivable. This situation is readily distinguishable from one in which no baseline for a future modification of child support is calculated because the amount of a parent’s income is unknown. The stipulated amount of the mother’s income establishes the necessary baseline for purposes of a possible future modification of support.
Support obligation
Father argues that the circuit court abused its discretion by not ordering that the mother’s support obligation apply retroactively to the date he served her with his petition to modify support in September 2021. He further alleges that the court heard evidence about the parties’ incomes and the fact that “the children moved into his home” in November 2022. Father also claims that at the February 2023 hearing, the court verbally ordered that the older child remain in his custody.
No evidence in the record supports father’s allegation that the circuit court orally granted him custody of the children in February 2023 because father did not file a transcript or written statement of facts signed by the circuit court memorializing the February 2023 hearing. And he unilaterally stopped paying child support that month despite not filing a written motion to modify child support based on a change in the children’s living arrangements until July 2023. Without a transcript or written statement of facts of the February 2023 hearing, this court cannot conclude that the circuit court abused its discretion by making the modification retroactive to only January 2024.
Attorneys’ fees
The circuit court ordered father to prepare a final order and pay the mother $7,055 in child support arrearages within 10 days. Rather than doing so, however, father withheld payment.
Also, as represented by counsel for the mother, the order he prepared at the court’s direction did “not even remotely” qualify as a final order because it did not resolve outstanding issues about “medical bills and other things.” And when the mother’s counsel contacted father’s counsel in an attempt to fix the order’s deficiencies, father’s counsel did not agree on a resolution, necessitating yet another hearing in the circuit court. Accordingly, the circuit court did not abuse its discretion by awarding the mother a small portion of her attorney’s fees.
Affirmed.
Battista v. Battista, Record No. 0586-24-4, Oct. 28, 2025. CAV (unpublished opinion) (Decker). From the Circuit Court of Frederick County (Madden). (Matthew L. Kreitzer; Timothy R. Johnson; Northern Valley Law, PLC, on brief), for appellant. (Stephanie S. Ryan; Ryan Law, PLLC, on brief), for appellee. VLW 025-7-312. 12 pp.
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