In re Marriage of Rifkin & Carty
Annotate this CaseAfter a long and contentious child custody dispute, during which Father made multiple accusations against Mother, the family court issued an order declaring Father a vexatious litigant and prohibiting him from filing any new litigation in propria persona without first obtaining leave of court, and ordered him to pay some of Mother’s attorney fees. Father later unsuccessfully applied to vacate the prefiling order and remove his name from the Judicial Council’s list of vexatious litigants. The court of appeal held that Father’s challenges were untimely because they should have been raised in an appeal from the September 2012 prefiling order, rather than from the later order denying his application to vacate that order. The court noted that it would rejected Father’s arguments that the prefiling order was improper because Mother failed to show Father had no reasonable probability of prevailing in the custody case; that in concluding he was a vexatious litigant, the family court improperly took into consideration applications he had made to hold Mother in contempt; and that the family court erred in awarding attorney fees to Mother.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.