In 1997, a Michigan family court entered a consent judgment in Christine Morrison’s name. She never signed it. Neither did her attorney. That fact was stipulated to on the record by both sides’ lawyers in 2001. And for the twenty-four years since, not one court, one oversight body, or one elected official has been willing to do anything about it. This series is about how that is possible — and why it could still happen to your family today.
Last October, I published a piece on Clutch Justice about Daniel J. Henry, the first acting director of Michigan’s Judicial Tenure Commission, and the whistleblower letter he sent to then-Attorney General Jennifer Granholm in 2001. What I described in that piece as a systemic warning from a credentialed insider was that — but it was also something more specific than I made clear at the time. Henry wasn’t documenting conditions he had observed in the abstract. He was Christine Morrison’s attorney. He was writing to the Attorney General about what had happened to his client.
Michigan did nothing.
That detail changes the story considerably. It means that in 2001, the person who helped build Michigan’s judicial accountability structure went to the state’s chief law enforcement officer and said: here is my client, here is what the court did to her, here is the documented record, and something needs to be done about it. Christine Morrison was not a peripheral figure in that correspondence. She was its subject. Her case was the evidence. The state’s non-response was not a failure to act on a general warning — it was a failure to act on a specific, documented injury to a specific named person, raised by an attorney with standing to raise it.
What follows — across six pieces, of which this is the first — is the fuller account.
Why I’m Writing This
I want to be direct about something before we go further, because I think it matters to how you read this series.
Cases like Christine Morrison’s are easy to dismiss. Not because the facts aren’t credible, but because the presentation often isn’t. People who have spent decades fighting a system that will not acknowledge what happened to them tend to communicate in a register that reads, to an outside observer, as unhinged: dense legal citations stacked against conspiracy framing, document dumps without editorial scaffolding, the accumulated frustration of someone who has been told “no” so many times they’ve stopped trusting that anyone will hear them at all.
I understand why that happens. I also know it doesn’t serve them.
My job in this series is to strip away everything that obscures the core legal and factual record and let that record speak for itself — because the record in this case is, on its own terms, extraordinary. Two attorneys stipulated in open court that neither party signed the document that became the governing order in Christine Morrison’s family court case. That is not an allegation. It is a transcript. The question this series asks is not whether that happened, but what it means that it did — and that nothing has been done about it for twenty-four years.
If two attorneys confirm in open court that a consent judgment was never signed by either party, and Michigan law holds that such a judgment is void, and void judgments can be challenged at any time: what does it mean that every court, every oversight body, and every elected official has closed the door? That is what this series investigates.
The Structural Problem That Made This Possible
Before we get to Christine Morrison’s specific case, you need to understand the architecture that produced it, because without that architecture, her case looks like a fluke. It is not a fluke. It is a foreseeable outcome of identifiable structural conditions.
Michigan family courts operate with a degree of discretion that most people navigating them for the first time do not anticipate. Consent judgments — court orders that are supposed to reflect voluntary agreements between parties — can be submitted and entered with attorney signatures rather than client signatures. The theory is that attorneys act as agents for their clients. The problem is that agency has limits, and one of those limits is informed consent: an attorney cannot bind a client to terms the client has not agreed to. Michigan case law on this is not ambiguous. But the procedural mechanism that would prevent it from happening in the first place — mandatory client signature on the face of any consent judgment before entry — does not exist as a uniform statewide requirement.
That gap was present in 1997. It is still present today.
Michigan court rules do not require a client’s personal signature on a consent judgment before a family court may enter it. Attorney approval “as to form” has been used as a substitute. Michigan case law holds that form approval does not constitute client consent to content — but that distinction has no procedural enforcement mechanism at the point of entry.
The 1997 judgment was an annulment, not a divorce. The marriage produced one child. Michigan law does not bar annulment when children exist — their legal status is protected by statute regardless — but annulment grounds are narrow and specific: fraud, duress, bigamy, incapacity. The basis pleaded here, and whether it was legally adequate, is part of the record this series will examine in Part 1.
Annulment and divorce produce very different financial outcomes — and not symmetrically. A divorce triggers equitable division of marital assets, potential spousal support, and, if the marriage lasted ten or more years, derivative Social Security benefit eligibility for both spouses. An annulment legally erases the marriage: no marital estate to divide, no spousal support basis, no derivative Social Security claim. The child’s support obligations survive either way — attached to the child, not the marriage. The result is a structure where one party captures the financial advantages of “no marriage ever existed” while the other remains bound by enforcement orders flowing from a judgment she never signed. That asymmetry is not incidental to this case. It is worth asking whose interests the annulment served — and why that vehicle was chosen.
What happens when a consent judgment is entered without valid client consent? According to Michigan Supreme Court precedent, it is void. A void judgment has no legal effect and can be challenged at any time. The United States Supreme Court has held the same: a judgment entered without subject-matter jurisdiction is void, and a judgment entered without personal jurisdiction — which requires either proper service or actual consent — is also void. Critically, both Michigan and federal courts have held that void judgments can be challenged collaterally and without any time limitation. That sounds like a clear remedy.
But here is where the trap closes: courts that are asked to vacate void judgments routinely deny relief on the grounds that too much time has passed — even though the law explicitly holds that laches does not apply to void judgments. The party is left arguing in a circle that has no exit. The judgment is void, so nothing has to be appealed. But the court will not vacate it. And no higher court will intervene, because there is nothing pending to review. Meanwhile, MCR 2.613(B) expressly authorizes any Michigan court to correct a void judgment — it is not discretionary. A court that declines to consider a voidness challenge on the grounds that it was raised against a prior judge’s ruling is committing procedural error, not exercising appropriate restraint.
The record in Morrison’s case contains three separate, on-the-record acknowledgments that she did not consent to or sign the governing judgment. 1999: Morrison tells Chief Judge Maceroni directly, “I never consented or signed that, and neither did my attorney.” 2001: During attorney malpractice proceedings, opposing counsel Geyer stipulates: “This was not a consent. I’ll stipulate that the clients did not sign either amendment — or the original.” The stipulation is entered without objection. 2025: Morrison raises the same facts before Judge Yokich, referencing both prior transcripts. Yokich declines to consider them. None of these statements has been rebutted in the record. Part 1 of this series examines each transcript in full.
Michigan law holds that a judgment entered without valid consent or proper jurisdiction is void ab initio — void from the beginning. A void judgment has no legal effect and cannot be enforced. The Michigan Supreme Court has confirmed, in In re Ferranti (2019) and Lawrence M. Clarke v. Richco Construction (2011), that void judgments may be challenged at any time.
The United States Supreme Court has held the same principle at the federal constitutional level: a judgment entered without subject-matter jurisdiction is void, and a judgment entered without personal jurisdiction — which requires either proper service or the party’s actual consent — is also void. Both Michigan and federal courts have recognized that void judgments may be challenged collaterally and without any time limitation. This is not a gray area of law.
In the Morrison case, the consent judgment’s validity depends entirely on whether Christine actually consented. The record contains three separate transcripts — from 1999, 2001, and 2025 — in which the absence of consent is stated, stipulated to, or acknowledged. None of those statements has been rebutted.
Here is the first problem. If a judgment is truly void, it has no legal effect. Courts have held that you cannot appeal a void judgment because there is nothing to appeal — a void order is a nullity, not a valid ruling that can be reviewed by a higher court.
So when Morrison tried to get appellate review of the void consent judgment, she ran into courts that said: there is nothing here to appeal. The Michigan Court of Appeals dismissed her superintending control petition in September 2025 on exactly this basis, citing “lack of jurisdiction.”
When Morrison returned to the trial court to have the void judgment vacated directly, Judge Yokich acknowledged the argument but declined to act, noting that she had not sought relief in the trial court immediately after the judgment was entered in 1997, and that it was now more than twenty years later.
This reasoning directly contradicts the Michigan Supreme Court holdings on void judgments: that laches does not apply, and that a void judgment can be challenged at any time. But courts applying that time-bar reasoning do not call it laches. They frame it as a failure to exhaust timely remedies — a different legal hook for the same practical result.
The result is a closed procedural loop with no exit:
The judgment is void, so it cannot be appealed. You must challenge it in the trial court. The trial court declines to vacate it because you did not seek relief promptly. You try to get appellate supervision through superintending control. The appellate court dismisses for lack of jurisdiction because the judgment is void. The trial court judge declines to review his predecessor’s orders because that is for higher courts. The higher court declines jurisdiction. The loop closes.
On August 11, 2025, Judge Yokich told Morrison directly: “I don’t go back and review prior judge’s decisions. That’s what the next higher court is required to do.” That statement is procedural error. MCR 2.613(B) authorizes any Michigan court to correct a void judgment — it is not restricted to original judges, and it is not discretionary. A claim that a judgment is void implicates due process and may be raised at any time. Courts cannot decline to consider it because the issue touches a prior ruling.
On September 5, 2025, the Michigan Court of Appeals dismissed Morrison’s superintending control petition for “lack of jurisdiction.” She filed for reconsideration. She filed a delayed application for leave to appeal. Every filing has been denied or dismissed. The question of whether a court may continue to enforce a judgment labeled “consent” where the record contains unrebutted stipulations that the party never consented remains unresolved and is expected to be addressed on appeal.
The judgment — entered in 1997, confirmed by opposing counsel to be unsigned in 2001 — remains in force and continues to be the basis for enforcement actions against her.
What Twenty-Nine Years Looks Like
The timeline below is an overview of the Morrison case. It is not complete — the full record spans thousands of pages of court filings, transcripts, and correspondence with state and federal agencies. But it gives you a sense of the arc: what happened, when, and what the institutional response was at each stage. Click any entry to expand the detail.
What This Has Cost
I am going to be specific here, because specificity is what separates accountability journalism from advocacy. The documented consequences of the void judgment against Christine Morrison include the following.
She was separated from her daughter. This is not a peripheral consequence. It is the center of the case.
The child’s name is Ashley. In the attorney malpractice trial, opposing counsel stated on the record: “Because Mr. Aiello has made prior errors, which precluded her from having visitation with her daughter… She couldn’t be with her daughter, that’s it exactly.” A witness called during those proceedings — an acquaintance who saw Morrison regularly — testified that Christine was “pretty distraught.” Asked how often Christine had seen Ashley in the preceding three years, the witness answered: “She was unable to see Ashley.” Pressed for a number, the witness conceded fewer than ten times in three years was probably accurate.
Q: Do you know how often Christine saw Ashley in the last three years?
A: She was unable to see Ashley.
Q: If I told you it was less than 10 times, would you agree with me?
A: Probably be accurate.
That testimony was given by a witness describing the years of separation that followed directly from the void 1997 judgment and the attorney errors that enforced it. Morrison has never stopped fighting to be recognized as her daughter’s mother. The court has never stopped treating the unsigned judgment as valid.
Her retirement account was liquidated. According to her published account, her attorney caused the liquidation of her retirement assets in the course of the malpractice proceedings connected to this case.
She was reported to credit agencies. Child support enforcement actions tied to the void underlying judgment were reported to credit agencies, with ongoing financial consequences.
Bench warrants were issued and she was threatened with jailing. Judge Yokich’s enforcement of child support orders derived from the void judgment included the issuance of bench warrants. Per Morrison’s account, she was threatened with incarceration.
Her professional licenses were affected. Morrison has documented the suspension of professional licenses as a consequence of court-ordered financial obligations tied to the void judgment.
Every one of these consequences flowed from a judgment that two attorneys confirmed, on the record in 2001, was never signed by either party. Not one Michigan court, state agency, or elected official has ordered relief. The enforcement continues.
Why It Could Happen to You
I want to close this prologue with the question that should concern anyone currently going through Michigan family court, or anyone who might someday: how do you protect yourself from something like this?
The honest answer is that the current system does not give you strong tools. A client’s personal signature should appear on a consent judgment before a family court enters it, but they failed her. And there is no mandatory review mechanism that would catch a judgment entered without genuine client consent at the point of entry, before it becomes the governing order and enforcement begins. And as the Morrison case demonstrates, the corrective mechanisms available after the fact, whether through appeal, superintending control, or direct motion to vacate, can all be denied or dismissed in ways that leave you with no actionable path forward.
And the error compounds, because beneath all of that, there is her ex, Hannaford, who’s business generated $2,023,999 in net profit over four years (forensic accountant John Dery, CPA), while he reported $404.66/week to the Friend of the Court. That is a significant and concerning gap between what he told the court and what the corporate tax returns showed. The retroactive child support order ($33,764.70, back to 2005 when the petition wasn’t filed until 2007) has a specific federal law violation: 42 U.S.C. § 666(a)(9) prohibits exactly that. Then there’s Attorney Aiello, who liquidated her retirement assets despite botching her case. It’s a horrific calamity of errors, that has stolen Christine’s life. No one should ever go through this. And yet Christine has been forced to endure every step of the way.
Daniel Henry told Michigan all of this in 2001. Representative Stone acknowledged it in 2019. The state’s response has been, consistently, something between bureaucratic inertia and active indifference.
The gap is still open. The Morrison series is an attempt to make that visible. On May 20, 2026, the case goes before the Michigan Supreme Court.
Part 1 — “The Paper She Never Signed” — examines the 1997 consent judgment, the attorney’s own testimony about how it was signed, and the specific legal argument for why it was void from the moment it was entered. It publishes next on Clutch Justice.
Clutch Justice is investigating consent judgment practices in Michigan family courts. If you or someone you know has experienced a judgment entered without genuine informed consent, contact us at hello@clutchjustice.com. Anonymous submissions are accepted.
Sources
Rita Williams, The Gap Is Still Open: A Prologue to the Morrison Case, Clutch Justice (Apr. 17, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/morrison-series-prologue/.
Williams, R. (2026, April 17). The gap is still open: A prologue to the Morrison case. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/morrison-series-prologue/
Williams, Rita. “The Gap Is Still Open: A Prologue to the Morrison Case.” Clutch Justice, 17 Apr. 2026, clutchjustice.com/morrison-series-prologue/.
Williams, Rita. “The Gap Is Still Open: A Prologue to the Morrison Case.” Clutch Justice, April 17, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/morrison-series-prologue/.
