Appellate Court declines to review issue not raised before trial court: Ochoa v. Behling, 221 Conn. App. 45 (2023)
Ochoa v. Behling, 221 Conn. App. 45 (2023) (Appellate Court declines to review issue not raised before trial court)
Officially released August 8, 2023
In Short (and all you need to know): Father failed to raise the issue of the trial court’s authority to award a tax exemption to an intervening third party at any time prior to appeal and so the Appellate Court declined to review his claim pursuant to Practice Book § 60-5.
Father appealed the trial court’s order permitting the intervening maternal grandmother, who has sole legal and physical custody of the child, to continue to claim a federal income tax dependency exemption for the child.
Father argued on appeal that the trial court erred “in adopting [a] prior court order” permitting the custodial nonparent to take the tax dependency exemption. Father argued on appeal that the trial court lacked the authority to “allocate federal tax liability, as doing so is within the exclusive province of the United States Congress.”
The Appellate Court declined to review Father’s underlying claims based on Practice Book § 60-5. Father failed to raise the claim that the trial court lacked authority to enter such order at any point before the trial court. He did not file an objection to the motion requesting that relief, he did not file an objection to the proposed orders which sought the relief, and he did not raise the issue during the hearing.
The Judgment was affirmed.