From July 31 through August 14, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals issued a busy docket spanning domestic relations, workers’ compensation, administrative and agency disputes, juvenile matters, and civil litigation.
The difference from a docket made up solely of memorandum affirmances is significant: this three-week period included published opinions with concrete guidance for lawyers. The most useful opinions address three recurring practice problems:
preserving a child-support calculation issue for appeal;
making the express findings required for an alimony award; and
determining when a payment-processing fee is distinct from a statutorily capped price or markup.
The Court also issued numerous unpublished memorandum affirmances and rehearing dispositions. Those resolve the individual cases, but they generally do not create citable precedent. This update focuses on the published holdings that practitioners can actually use.
July 31: Avery v. Avery—preservation, custody, and statutory alimony findings
Avery v. Avery, CL-2025-0787, is the most consequential domestic-relations decision in this group. The Court affirmed the trial court’s child-support and custody determinations, but reversed the alimony award and remanded for the statutory findings required by Ala. Code § 30-2-57.
Child-support calculations must be preserved
The husband argued on appeal that the trial court had used the wrong income figure in calculating child support. The Court held that the argument was not preserved because the husband had not presented that alleged error to the trial court in a postjudgment motion.
That is a practical warning for family-law counsel. When the alleged error concerns the calculation of income, the application of a guideline figure, or another factual component of the child-support determination, counsel should not assume that a general postjudgment challenge is enough. The asserted calculation error must be presented to the trial court with sufficient specificity to permit correction before appeal.
Judge Edwards concurred in part and in the result, explaining that she would have reached the merits because the CS-42 form incorporated into the judgment reflected factual findings regarding income. The majority holding, however, is the operative instruction: preservation remains essential.
Domestic-violence findings carry statutory custody consequences
The Court also affirmed the award of sole physical and sole legal custody to the wife. The trial court had found that the husband committed domestic violence. That finding triggered the statutory presumptions in Ala. Code §§ 30-3-131 and 30-3-133 against placing a child in the perpetrator’s sole, joint legal, or joint physical custody and in favor of residence with the non-perpetrating parent.
The case reinforces two practice points:
A domestic-violence finding should be addressed directly in the evidence, requested findings, and proposed judgment; and
The litigation consequences extend beyond visitation. The finding affects physical custody, legal custody, decision-making authority, and the statutory analysis of the child’s best interests.
An alimony label is not an alimony finding
The trial court awarded the wife 36 months of “periodic rehabilitative alimony.” The Court of Civil Appeals reversed because the judgment did not include the express findings required by § 30-2-57(a): that the recipient lacks a sufficient separate estate to preserve the marital economic status quo, that the payor can provide support without undue hardship, and that the circumstances make an award equitable.
The Court also recognized that property division and alimony are interrelated. Once it reversed the alimony award, it declined to review the claimed inequity in the property division and directed reconsideration of the property division together with the alimony determination.
For family-law lawyers, the drafting lesson is direct: a judgment should not merely announce alimony. It should contain the statutory findings that support the award and should treat the property division and alimony analysis as connected decisions.
July 31: Harris v. Lineage Logistics—scheduled injuries remain scheduled absent the recognized exception
In Harris v. Lineage Logistics, CL-2025-1033, the Court affirmed a workers’ compensation judgment limiting an employee to scheduled-member benefits for partial finger amputations, even though the trial court found the employee permanently and totally disabled.
The employee argued that the court should first determine whether he was permanently and totally disabled and only then decide whether the scheduled-injury provision applied. The Court rejected that position as inconsistent with binding Alabama Supreme Court precedent.
The controlling framework remains that an injury to a scheduled member is compensated under the schedule unless the employee proves a recognized exception—principally, that the effects of the loss extend to other parts of the body and interfere with their efficiency. The Court noted that the employee had not argued that exception or the separate debilitating-pain exception.
The practitioner takeaway is not simply that scheduled injuries are limited. It is that the theory must be pleaded, developed, and supported at trial. Evidence of severe vocational loss alone does not remove a case from the schedule. Counsel must focus on the legally recognized path out of the schedule: extension of the injury’s effects to other parts of the body, or another established exception.
August 7: Alabama Beverage Licensees Association v. Stewart—a transaction-specific convenience fee is not automatically a prohibited markup
In Alabama Beverage Licensees Association v. Stewart, CL-2026-0014, the Court rejected a challenge to the Alabama ABC Board’s credit-card convenience fee for wholesale case-lot liquor purchases.
The plaintiffs argued that the fee effectively increased the statutory cap on the ABC Board’s wholesale markup. The Court held that the fee was not a markup of the liquor’s wholesale cost. It was a separate, optional, transaction-specific charge imposed only on purchasers who elected to pay by credit card. The Court also relied on Ala. Code § 41-1-60(e), which authorizes state entities accepting credit-card payments to impose a surcharge or convenience fee to offset qualifying administrative charges.
The broader statutory-construction lesson is useful beyond alcohol regulation: a fee associated with a chosen payment method is not necessarily part of the regulated price of the underlying good or service. The statute’s text, the definition of the capped item, the optional nature of the fee, and the existence of separate statutory authority for the fee all mattered.
August 14: a busy memorandum docket, but no new published civil doctrine
The August 14 Civil Appeals docket included memorandum affirmances in matters such as Kuiper v. Kuiper, Dewberry v. Dewberry, West v. Ginn, and several DHR appeals. In Diaz v. Diaz, the Court granted rehearing, withdrew its earlier memorandum, substituted a new memorandum, and affirmed.
Those entries matter to the parties and counsel involved. They do not, however, supply new citable doctrine for the broader civil bar. Under Rule 54, a no-opinion affirmance or memorandum from the Court of Civil Appeals generally has no precedential value and may not be cited in arguments or briefs, except for specified preclusion-related purposes. Ala. R. App. P. 54.
That distinction is important. A high-volume docket does not necessarily signal a high-volume body of new law. Lawyers should obtain and analyze the memorandum in their own cases, but they should not infer broad holdings from captions, outcomes, or the fact of an affirmance.
Bottom line
The July 31, August 7, and August 14 Civil Appeals dockets produced three practical published lessons:
preserve specific child-support calculation errors in the trial court;
make the express statutory findings required for alimony, and recognize the effect of domestic-violence findings on custody; and
distinguish a regulated price or markup from an optional, transaction-specific payment-processing fee.
The remaining memorandum and rehearing entries are procedurally important to the litigants involved, but they do not change the published law available to other practitioners.
This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It summarizes selected published Alabama Court of Civil Appeals opinions and publicly available memorandum and rehearing entries issued July 31, August 7, and August 14, 2026. Lawyers should review the complete decision, statutes, rules, and record applicable to each matter.