Debra Tremble “Wife” and Lamar Tremble “Husband” were married on March 23, 1974, and Wife filed for divorce in the Superior Court of Bulloch County on May 12, 2006. Following a jury trial, on July 17, 2009, the trial court entered a Final Judgment and Decree of Total Divorce reflecting the jury’s award. After the trial court’s term expired, the trial court then entered another Final Judgment and Decree of Total Divorce on September 14, 2009, that was, on its face, identical to the previous order that the court had entered on July 17, 2009. Husband filed a motion for new trial, challenging the substance of the trial court’s September 14, 2009, Final Decree, and Wife filed a motion to set aside the September 14 Final Decree, arguing that the trial court did not have jurisdiction to enter this order. The trial court denied both motions in an order dated January 26, 2010, prompting these consolidated appeals.1 In Case No. S10F1810, Husband contends that the trial court erred in denying his motion for new trial; and in Case No. S10F1811, Wife contends that the trial court erred in denying her motion to set aside the September 14, 2009 Final Decree. For the reasons set forth below, we hold that the trial court erred in denying Wife’s motion to set aside the September 14 order, and that accordingly, the trial court’s September 14 order must be vacated. In light of our holding in Case No. S10F1811 that the trial court’s September 14 order must be vacated, we further hold that Husband’s appeal challenging the substance of that order must be dismissed. The record reveals that, following a May 5-7, 2008 jury trial, the trial court entered an unsigned Final Judgment and Decree of Total Divorce on June 18, 2009. On July 10, 2009 Husband’s counsel attempted to file a motion for new trial to challenge this unsigned order. However, because the judgment was not signed and thus not final, the clerk did not stamp file the motion.
On July 17, 2009, the trial court issued a signed Final Judgment and Decree, which reflected the jury’s award and incorporated a Qualified Domestic Relations Order QDRO that “effectuated the award of a portion of Husband’s Georgia Pacific LLC 401k Retirement Savings Plan to Wife.”2 According to an affidavit by Teresa Tyler, the Deputy Clerk of the Bulloch County Superior Court, the motion for new trial that Husband had attempted to file in response to the unsigned June 18, 2009 Final Decree “was inadvertently never file stamped and made part of the official Court record” but “should” have been. In any event, officially, no motion for new trial was filed following the entry of the July 17, 2009 Final Decree.
