FAMILY COURT DID NOT HAVE AUTHORITY TO SUA SPONTE VACATE A CONSENT ORDER IN THIS SUPPORT PROCEEDING, VACATION OF THE CONSENT ORDER AND THE RESULTING COMMITMENT ORDER REVERSED (SECOND DEPT).

The Second Department, reversing Family Court, determined the court did have the authority to issue a sua sponte order vacating a consent order:

Upon the father’s admission to a willful violation of the support order and upon the father’s representation that he was employed, an order of disposition was entered upon the parties’ consent, finding the father to be in willful violation of the support order and committing him to a term of incarceration of five months, but suspending his commitment on the condition that he complied with the support order (hereinafter the consent order). Shortly after the consent order was entered, the Family Court received a telephone call, ostensibly from the father’s purported employer, informing the court that the father was not, in fact, employed. The court, over the father’s objection, sua sponte issued an order vacating the consent order (hereinafter the sua sponte order). The court then proceeded to a willfulness hearing, at the conclusion of which it issued the second order of disposition, finding the father to be in willful violation of the support order and directing that he be committed to the Orange County Jail for a period of six months unless he paid the purge amount of $19,839 (hereinafter the commitment order). …

As the father correctly contends, the Family Court lacked authority to issue the sua sponte order vacating the consent order (see CPLR 5019[a]) …). Moreover, the court issued the sua sponte order on the basis of unsworn statements made during a telephone call between the court and the father’s purported employer … . Accordingly, the sua sponte order must be reversed, and the commitment order, which was based in part on the sua sponte order, must be reversed as well. Matter of Schiavone v Mannese, 2019 NY Slip Op 01419, Second Dept 2-27-19