Thacker v. Hale

In Thacker v. Hale, 146 Md. App. 203, 806 A.2d 751 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. Sept. 5, 2002), the circuit court entered a final judgment granting the parties an absolute divorce. The judgment included a monetary award, which permitted Ms. Thacker to accelerate the balance of the award if her former spouse missed a payment. Twelve years later, after payment deadlines had repeatedly been ignored, Ms. Thacker moved to accelerate the unpaid balance of the award. The circuit court, however, found that such a provision was not permitted by the Family Law Article and declared that it constituted an irregularity under Rule 2-535(b). The Court disagreed. Rejecting the circuit court's finding of "irregularity," we held that the circuit court lacked the revisory power under Rule 2-535(b) to strike the acceleration provision. In doing so, the Court overruled McClayton v. McClayton, 68 Md. App. 615, 515 A.2d 231 (1986), to the extent that it "stood for the proposition that the erroneous inclusion of an impermissible term in the monetary award provisions of the divorce judgment is an 'irregularity'." An irregularity, we pointed out, "usually means irregularity of process or procedure, and not an error, which in the legal parlance generally connotes departure from the truth or accuracy of which a defendant had notice and could have challenged." The Court also rejected the contention that it was a "mistake" under Rule 2-535(b).