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421 So. 2d 48

Docket No. 80-1803.

Messana v. Messana

Cora MESSANA, Appellant, v. Frank Lawrence MESSANA, As Personal Representative of the Estate of Frank Messana, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided October 27, 1982.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1982-10-27

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“When a party to a divorce action dies before the trial court signs a written order of dissolution, the trial court must dismiss the action.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 983 So. 2d 773 - Mercurio v. Headrick

Relies on Sahler v. Sahler · 414 So. 2d 1164 - Jaris v. Tucker

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1982-10-27

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently June 2008

6 state decisions

30198219902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Edna L. Caruso and Johnson & Bakst, P.A., West Palm Beach, for appellant.

¶2Louis L. Williams of Farish, Farish & Romani, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

¶3GREEN, OLIVER L., Jr., Associate Judge.

¶4This is an appeal by the wife from a final judgment of dissolution signed after the husband's death "nunc pro tunc" as of a date prior to the death. The wife and the husband's personal representative agree that the husband died and that the wife moved to dismiss the suit before the nunc pro tunc judgment was signed, but the parties disagree on whether the trial court had orally granted dissolution prior to the death. We need not, however, determine whether the trial court had orally granted a dissolution because an oral dissolution is not effective under Florida law. Jaris v. Tucker,414 So.2d 1164 (Fla. 3d DCA 1982) (en banc); Sahler v. Sahler,154 Fla. 206, 17 So.2d 105 (1944). When a party to a divorce action dies before the trial court signs a written order of dissolution, the trial court must dismiss the action. Id. Accordingly, the judgment is vacated and this cause is remanded with instructions to dismiss.

¶5GLICKSTEIN and HURLEY, JJ., concur.

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