A snappy weekly newsletter from Horwitz Law, PLLC summarizing the week's decisions from the Tennessee Court of Appeals.

June 29–July 5, 2026

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Mother loses custody of her young daughter after a domestic-violence referral and an admission of methamphetamine use; the child, then three, hadn’t seen a doctor since she was six weeks old. Mother makes real early progress—treatment, parenting classes, a job, unsupervised visits—then leaves the supportive living center because the schedule is too demanding, moves back in with her actively-using parents, relapses, and stops showing up for drug screens, losing visitation for the year before the petition. The trial court terminates on five grounds and finds termination in the child’s best interest, but reaches that best-interest conclusion after declining to consider eight of the twenty statutory factors because DCS supposedly failed to plead them. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Affirmed in part, vacated in part. All five grounds stand. But a trial court can’t let DCS’s pleading choices amend the statute—the General Assembly requires trial courts to weigh every relevant best-interest factor and make their own assessment of them, not mark eight of them neutral because they went unpleaded. Best interest is vacated and remanded so the court can actually consider all twenty.
After Stepmother is charged with sex-trafficking a minor, Father agrees to place his two children with Mother, who then wins emergency custody—an order that gives Father no visitation at all for its first two months (later softened to four supervised hours a week at a recovery facility). Father refuses to visit at “some strange place,” keeps in touch by phone, and is literally at the courthouse awaiting a custody re-hearing when Mother and Stepfather file to terminate his rights and let Stepfather adopt, alleging the lone ground of abandonment by failure to visit. The trial court terminates. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Reversed. On this record, the evidence didn’t clearly and convincingly establish willful abandonment: Father’s legal visitation didn’t even exist for the first two months of the window, and he was at the courthouse awaiting a re-hearing on visitation when the petition was filed. (The Court also notes that Father is no model litigant—among other things, he called his kids “f*** trophies” on social media—but that isn’t the same as willful abandonment.)
A disappointed bidder asks Shelby County for copies of every proposal submitted on a grant RFP. The County—having already cancelled the RFP without awarding anything—says no, invoking the Public Records Act exception that shields such proposals from disclosure until an intent to award is announced. Requester sues, argues the exception can’t apply because there’s no forthcoming award, files for recusal and mandamus and sanctions along the way, then declines to file a hearing transcript on the theory that the County should have to produce it. Trial court dismisses with prejudice. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Affirmed. The statute says proposals “shall not be open for public inspection until the intent to award the contract to a particular respondent is announced”—and since the County cancelled before announcing any award, that day never came and the records stay closed. The missing transcript is Requester’s problem, not the County’s, so the trial court’s findings are presumed supported; the panel forgives the Rule 27 briefing lapses and reaches the merits anyway.
Foreign-national Sellers, living overseas, list Tennessee land through a broker who appends their electronic signatures to three contract amendments—without, the trial court finds, contemporaneous authorization. But Sellers’ representative later reviews the deal and blesses it by message (“Go ahead, and everything will be fine”), reminds Buyer of the closing deadline, and sends passport copies for the closing papers—right up until Sellers learn a 15% FIRPTA tax will be withheld, whereupon they refuse to close. Buyer, who never formally tendered the price, sues for specific performance. Trial court awards it, plus fees. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Affirmed. A principal who learns of an agent’s unauthorized signatures and adopts the deal anyway has ratified it—and the real-estate-broker statute’s liability shield doesn’t rescue a seller who “knew or had reason to know.” Formal tender was excused as futile because Sellers’ own refusal to execute the closing documents paralyzed the transaction; a party can’t create the impossibility and then complain the other side didn’t tender into it. Sellers changed their minds over a tax, not fraud.
A trial court extends child support for life for a severely disabled adult child, using the guidelines to set the amount. Father appeals, insisting the court should have offset the child’s Social Security income—but the child-support worksheet shows no federal benefits, and Father files no transcript or statement of the evidence to prove otherwise. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Affirmed. Without a transcript, the trial court’s findings—including that the child receives no Social Security—are conclusively presumed correct, which is “fatal to Father’s appeal” on the one fact that matters. And an appeal that had no chance of success on a record the appellant himself failed to supply is frivolous, so Mother gets her appellate attorney’s fees.
A divorce defendant, convinced of a sprawling conspiracy involving his wife, her lawyer, a prosecutor, and assorted officials—but notably not the trial judge—tries to file a combined answer and recusal motion. He says the clerk refused to docket it and left it as loose papers in the physical folder (the document asks for recusal of “the local judiciary” generally rather than this judge). No written motion was filed, no affidavit, and no order on recusal ever entered; his 10B petition asks this Court to make the trial judge rule. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Dismissed. Rule 10B lets this Court review exactly one thing—an order denying recusal—and there is no such order here, no proper motion below, and no affidavit; a blanket swipe at “the local judiciary” isn’t a recusal motion aimed at the judge who’s actually hearing the case.
Two men co-own a cluster of collision-and-rental businesses; one dies, and the survivor files a Verified Claim against the estate in probate court for an accounting and $382,207.48. While that claim sits in abeyance, the widow’s parallel suit is tried—dissolution, accounting, offsets, and a detailed 41-page final order dividing everything among the parties results. Nobody appeals. The estate then moves to dismiss the dormant probate claim as res judicata. Trial court dismisses. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Affirmed. Res judicata is a “rule of rest,” and the Verified Claim—same parties, same accounts, same accounting—arose from the very transactions litigated to final judgment in the other action, where counsel conceded it all could have been tried together. And the appellant’s attempted escape from this result (that the claim really pleaded fraud, a non-compulsory tort) fails for the simple reason that the claim pleaded no fraud.
At a criminal-contempt hearing, Father’s counsel keeps leading the witness, argues with the judge, gets held in direct contempt and fined $50, and—once jeopardy has attached—asks to continue so he can file a written Rule 10B recusal motion. The judge won’t grant a continuance (it would sink the contempt petition on jeopardy grounds) and won’t entertain an oral recusal motion, correctly noting that Rule 10B motions “must be made in writing.” Counsel never files one; the contempt petition is dismissed on the merits. Months later, Father brings a 10B appeal anyway. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Dismissed. No written motion, no affidavit, and—crucially—no order denying recusal, because the trial court never ruled on a recusal motion it never received. The order dismissing the contempt petition isn’t a recusal order, so there is nothing for this Court to review.
An employer hires his ex-wife as bookkeeper at $469 a week and gives her signatory authority on the business accounts. She uses that authority good and hard, bumping her own pay to $2,100 a week, inventing a fictitious employee routed to her own bank account, putting her housekeepers and personal assistant on the company payroll, and charging personal expenses—a spa visit, a boyfriend’s plane ticket, a hotel in a city her boss had never visited—to company cards. When litigation results, the trial court finds breach of the duty of loyalty and unjust enrichment and awards $78,029.83. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Affirmed. The bookkeeper’s evidentiary complaints fail—she made no objection to the payroll records at trial and the court actually admitted every document she offered—and the trial court, which found her not credible, had ample proof of the unauthorized raises, checks, and charges. And she wasn’t entitled to credit for her services because the employer sought as damages only the pay she took above her salary.
In a long divorce, Husband seizes the bank accounts, cancels Wife’s car and health insurance, and stops paying her credit cards, while moving onto a 200-acre farm with his girlfriend, buying her a $26,000 car with a loan, and giving $1,000 a month to a church. Wife—who cycled through a string of vocational certificates she never turned into a career and now works full-time in a prison kitchen—gets alimony in futuro based on the “anticipated expenses” in her affidavit, plus fees. Husband appeals, calling the future expenses “speculative” and pressing for rehabilitative alimony instead. Tennessee Court of Appeals: Affirmed in part, modified in part. Need can rest on anticipated—not just current—expenses, and the court crediting Wife’s affidavit isn’t undone by generic doubts about her live testimony. Husband’s rehabilitation theory dies for lack of any record evidence that jobs using Wife’s certificates were available or paid more than the prison kitchen. And his debt-division and fee arguments are waived for skeletal briefing. The one error: Since the real-estate proceeds were already disbursed, the court can’t order a credit card paid “directly” from them.

Firm Updates

New brief! Does the State of Tennessee enjoy sovereign immunity from civil contempt claims when it violates court orders? The State says yes. We say no. (Check back a few months to a year from now to learn the answer.)

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