Jones v. Texas Department of Family and Protective Services

OPINION

Evelyn Jones appeals from a Travis County district court’s order striking and dismissing her petitions to modify orders in two suits (later consolidated) affecting the parent-child relationship. The district court struck and dismissed the pleadings on the ground that they constituted an impermissible collateral attack on a prior final order of a Williamson County court. In five issues, Jones contends that the trial court erred in dismissing her pleadings because: (1) she had standing to file them; (2) the Williamson County court did not have jurisdiction to render the earlier order, making it void and subject to collateral attack; (3) even if her pleadings were filed in the wrong court, they sufficed to put all parties on notice of her intent to seek custody of one of the subject children; (4) one of the orders she sought to modify was not extinguished by the subsequent marriage of the parents of the subject child; and (5) the trial court should not have proceeded to dispose of motions that were improperly noticed. We will affirm.