Most family-law orders aren’t appealable as of right.
In Georgia, an appeal isn’t always a door you can walk through. For a wide swath of family law rulings (including divorce, child support, alimony, contempt findings, and equitable division questions), the legislature decided you have to ask permission first. That permission lives in O.C.G.A. § 5-6-35, and the vehicle is an application for discretionary appeal.
Get the application right and you earn a real merits appeal. Get it wrong, miss the 30-day window, or treat it like a placeholder filing, and the order you wanted reviewed becomes the order you have to live with.
What a discretionary appeal actually is
A discretionary appeal is a two-step process. First, you file a short, focused application explaining to the appellate court why your case warrants review. The opposing party some time to respond. The Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court then decides, on the papers alone, whether to grant the application.
If the application is granted, your case proceeds as an ordinary appeal: full briefs, oral argument if appropriate, and a written opinion. If the application is denied, the trial court’s order stands. In other words, the application is the moment the appellate court decides whether to listen.
Orders that require a discretionary appeal in Georgia
Among the categories most relevant to families and individuals:
- Domestic relations cases — including divorce, alimony, child support, and equitable division
- Modifications of any of the above
- Contempt rulings in domestic cases
- Appeals from administrative agencies
- Cases involving certain damage awards under specified thresholds
Statutory exceptions exist, and the line between a direct appeal and a discretionary appeal is not always intuitive, particularly in family law cases. We sort that out before the clock starts running, not after.
The thirty-day window, and why it is unforgiving
You have thirty days from the entry of the order to file your application. Certain post-judgment motions can affect timing, but the safer assumption is that day thirty is your deadline, and missing it forfeits the appeal entirely.
If you are reading this in week three, do not finish the article. Call us.
What we do, and how we work
Resurgens Legal Counsel handles discretionary appeals as serious appellate work, not as an extension of the trial. The questions an appellate court cares about—abuse of discretion, plain legal error, factual findings unsupported by the record, misapplication of a statute or controlling case—are not the questions that win at trial.
When you bring a case to us, we will:
- Read the record cold. The transcript, the exhibits, the orders, the proposed findings. We are looking for what the appellate court will see, not what the trial felt like.
- Identify the strongest appeal grounds. Most adverse rulings have multiple flaws. The application format rewards focus, not volume. Three sharp issues beat seven hedged ones.
- Write the application as an argument, not a summary. The court is deciding whether your case is worth its attention. The application has to make that case in plain, confident prose, anchored to the record and the law.
- Coordinate with trial counsel where appropriate. If another lawyer tried the case below, we will work with them, get up to speed quickly, and avoid stepping on the relationship. If we tried it, we already know the file.
- Be candid about the odds. Discretionary applications are denied more often than they are granted. That is the nature of the docket. We will tell you, honestly, whether your case is in the slice the appellate courts tend to pick up, and what a denial would mean for the underlying order.
When to call
The right time to involve appellate counsel is not after the application is denied. It is in the days immediately following the order you want reviewed, ideally before any post-judgment motions are filed, because the choice of motion can change which appellate route is open to you. We take new appeals on tight timelines regularly, and we are happy to give you a candid read on a case before you commit.