May 27, 2026

By Jeffrey T. Donner, Esq.

Florida appellate courts frequently affirm trial court orders without a written opinion. Lawyers call that a per curiam affirmance, or PCA. A PCA tells the parties the result, but it does not explain the reasoning. It is common. It is efficient. And in many cases, it is probably sufficient.

But not always.

De Villegas v. De Villegas, Case No. 3D24-1369, is a family law case from the Third District Court of Appeal. The court affirmed the trial court’s ruling without a written opinion. The mother then asked the appellate court for a written opinion, clarification, and certification so she could seek further review. The majority denied the motion and struck it to the extent it repeated the same request previously made.

That part of the case is procedurally ordinary.

The important part is the dissent.

Judge Miller dissented because, in his view, the appellate court should have issued a written opinion explaining why it affirmed. He was not necessarily saying the mother was entitled to reversal. He was not saying the appellate court could disregard preservation rules, reweigh credibility, or substitute its judgment for the trial judge’s factual findings. In fact, the dissent expressly recognized those limits.

That is what makes the dissent important.

Judge Miller’s point was narrower and more powerful: when a case produces an extreme result affecting a parent’s fundamental relationship with her child, the appellate court should explain itself.

The case began as a high-conflict custody dispute. The parents had separated years earlier and, for a period of time, had equal time-sharing. The father initially sought equal time-sharing and shared parental responsibility. Later, the dispute deteriorated, and the father sought majority time-sharing. A domestic violence injunction was entered, and the mother claimed the written injunction differed from the oral ruling by giving the father exclusive time-sharing. Her later appeal from that injunction was dismissed as untimely.

The facts then became more serious. The child began complaining of leg pain during virtual visits with the mother. The mother expressed concern and asked that he receive medical care. The child was initially diagnosed with growing pains. Later, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. When the mother later had an in-person visit, she discovered the child had a broken leg. Her questioning of the child distressed him, and the guardian ad litem viewed the interaction as implying abuse by the father.

The relationship among the parties, the guardian, and the court process deteriorated further. The mother accused the father of “kidnapping” the child after he took the child to the United Kingdom to observe a professional fight. She began recording conversations and interactions with the guardian. The guardian curtailed direct contact. The mother alleged parental alienation. The father sought exclusive time-sharing and parental responsibility.

After trial, the family court entered a comprehensive twenty-five-page order. The trial court resolved major credibility issues against the mother and awarded the father full parental responsibility and time-sharing, leaving the mother with only limited therapeutic supervised visits.

That is an extraordinary result.

The majority’s ruling did not explain why affirmance was required. The dissent did.

Judge Miller began with the basic rules of appellate review. Trial courts have broad discretion in time-sharing and parental-responsibility cases. Appellate courts do not retry the case. They do not reweigh testimony. They do not second-guess credibility determinations merely because they might have reached a different conclusion. If the trial court’s findings are supported by competent substantial evidence, the appellate court’s role is limited.

That is standard appellate law. It is also the reason many family law appeals fail.

The dissent also recognized that some of the mother’s arguments could not be reviewed because of procedural problems. Her complaints about the domestic violence injunction were troubling, but the injunction had not been timely appealed. Other claimed errors suffered from lack of preservation. Judge Miller acknowledged that these limitations constrained him to join in the affirmance.

But he still would have granted the motion for written opinion.

That distinction is the entire point of the case.

The dissent did not say, “Reverse the trial court.” It said, in substance, “Explain why we are affirming.”

That matters because this was not a routine dispute over money, property division, or litigation procedure. The order at issue effectively removed a parent from normal parenting. The mother was not merely given less time-sharing. She was reduced to limited therapeutic supervised visits. Whether that result was legally sustainable or not, it was severe. And because the parent-child relationship is constitutionally protected, the dissent viewed the case as implicating an issue of constitutional dimension.

Judge Miller cited Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57 (2000), the United States Supreme Court decision recognizing the fundamental liberty interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children. That citation is not decorative. It frames the issue. A parent’s right to raise a child is not just another interest in litigation. It is a fundamental liberty interest.

That does not mean a parent always wins. It does not mean a trial court cannot restrict time-sharing when the evidence supports that restriction. It does not mean a parent can ignore preservation rules, miss appellate deadlines, or expect the appellate court to retry the case.

But it does mean that when the state approves an order functionally separating a parent from ordinary parenting, the appellate court should be willing to say why.

That was the dissent’s central point.

The dissent also made another practical point: the affirmance should not be treated as barring future modification. Family law is different from many other areas of civil litigation because circumstances change. Children grow. Relationships evolve. Therapy may work. A parent may correct conduct the court found harmful. A reunification plan may progress. Evidence may develop. The fact that an appellate court affirms one order on one record does not necessarily mean the parent is forever barred from seeking modification if future facts justify it.

A written opinion could have made that clear.

Instead, the majority left the parties with silence.

That is the problem with PCAs in cases like this. A silent affirmance may be doctrinally permissible, but it creates real-world ambiguity. The losing parent does not know whether the appellate court rejected the arguments on the merits, found them unpreserved, deferred to credibility findings, relied on competent substantial evidence, or some combination of all of the above. The trial court receives no guidance. Future litigants receive no guidance. And the public receives no explanation for why such a serious restriction on parental rights survived appellate review.

There are, of course, institutional reasons appellate courts issue PCAs. Courts have heavy caseloads. Many appeals present no new legal issue. Many trial court orders are affirmed because the standard of review controls the outcome. Written opinions take time. Not every case deserves one.

But some cases do.

A case that effectively eliminates ordinary parenting by one parent is not a minor case. A case involving a child with cancer, a broken leg, allegations of alienation, allegations of abuse, a guardian ad litem, a domestic violence injunction, and a final order restricting a parent to therapeutic supervised visits is not an ordinary affirmance. Even if the result is legally correct, the legal system should be able to explain it.

That is why Judge Miller’s dissent is important. It does not indulge the fantasy that every disappointed family law litigant has a winning appeal. It does not ignore the trial court’s superior position to judge witnesses. It does not pretend preservation rules are optional.

It simply says that silence was not enough.

That is a modest point, but a powerful one.

In a system that gives trial judges enormous discretion over children and parents, appellate review is one of the few safeguards against extreme outcomes. Sometimes that review will still result in affirmance. But when the outcome is as severe as this one, and when the case implicates a parent’s fundamental right to raise a child, the court should do more than say “affirmed.”

It should explain why.