CR 60 – Motions to Vacate a Judgment
What does Vacate mean in the legal sense?
Vacate means to remove, void, or set aside. When an order is vacated it means that it is no longer valid, even if the reasons that the court originally entered the order were valid reasons at the time.
What is a motion to vacate and why you want to file one?
A motion to vacate is a request made to the court to void a past court order or decision. For example, Tim was ordered to pay a debt of $5,000 to a credit card company and the credit card company got a judgement against him. Attempting to enforce the judgement, the credit card company starts garnishing Tim’s wages. But, Tim never knew about this lawsuit, what can Tim do? If it is within the appeal time, his best recourse active is to use a motion for reconsideration or some other post verdict motion. However, sometimes, it’s just been too long. What if it has been over six months, what can Tim do then? Tim can file a motion to vacate.
What’s this got to do with my divorce case?
Believe it or not, some spouses will fake your signature on a divorce petition and final orders and then seek to get those entered against you. Then, later on, she or he disappears and takes $20,000 of your money with her. You then find out she got a $20,000 judgment against you. How do you eliminate a $20,000 judgment granted in favor of your ex wife? If you’re past the appeal or reconsideration period, you’ll need to seek relief under Civil Rule 60: Relief from Judgment or Order. In King County and Snohomish County, in order to bring a request for relief from a judgment, you generally must file a motion. See our motion page for additional information on what a motion is and how to file.
A motion to vacate can allow you to “set aside” a judgment that was entered against you. For example, if you have a $20,000 judgment for attorney’s fees entered against you, you might consider a motion to vacate under Civil Rule 60 for relief. If you’ve been the subject of a default judgment, you know better than anyone the frustration of getting a judgment on something that you had no idea existed.
Usually, we see motions to vacate under these scenarios:
- Clerical Mistakes – this usually means that there was some error in the judgment that can be corrected. For example, the court wrote the wrong dollar amount in the child support order.
- Failure of service. Usually the party that served you either took a shortcut and did not serve you with all of the pleadings (for example, you were served with a petition, but not a summons) or the party may have served you by mail or, even worse, publication [see CR60(7) ]. Publication is a lousy way to accomplish service because the person “publishing” the notice of a lawsuit usually does so in the most obscure Seattle newspaper no one has ever head of. The reason is simple: they are cheaper.
- Mistake or excusable neglect. CR60(b)(1) – These type of motions are more common than you realize. This is the mea culpa (“my bad”) motion. You see these situations when husbands or wifes put the divorce petition in the sock draw and forget about. There’s usually a good dose of the ex-wife or ex-husband telling you that they are not going to enter the papers when they are secretly planning on doing so anyway. In these cases, time is of the essence. The longer you wait to bring your motion, the less likely it is to succeed.
- Unavoidable casualty or misfortune – This means you experienced something severe and often catastrophic. For example you were in an car accident on the way to work or you were aboard Oceanic Flight 815
- Any “reason justifying relief from the operation of the judgment.” This is the catch all basis. There are a million reasons that a court might grant a vacation of judgment under CR 60(11) and a million more reasons that it might deny such a motion. These are the most difficult to predict.
The basics of motions to vacate for family law cases.
If you are considering a motion to vacate there are a couple of important things to remember:
- Time is of the essence. The longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes. Vacating judgments after one year has elapsed are very difficult, but possible.
- The clock runs from the date the judgment is signed by the Court, not the day that you received a copy of the judgment.
- The motion should be noted before the judge that issued the order. If that’s not possible, note it before the chief civil judge in Snhomish County or the Chief Family Law Judge in King County. If you don’t know what a note is or how to note a motion, see our court rules section. Remember when noting for King county to use the “IC Note for Motion Docket”.
