Appeal from an order of the Family Court of Broome County (Charnetsky, J.), entered March 4, 2013, which, in a proceeding pursuant to Family Ct Act article 4, dismissed respondent’s objections to an order of the Support Magistrate.
The parties are the divorced parents of three children. In the parties’ custody and child support agreement, which was later incorporated into their judgment of divorce, respondent (hereinafter the father) was required to pay, among other things, 50% of the child-care expenses incurred by petitioner (hereinafter the mother) that were related to her education or employment. The mother filed a petition alleging that the father violated the child support agreement by failing to pay for child-care expenses. Following a hearing, the Support Magistrate determined that the father had willfully failed to obey a prior court order, required that he pay $3,300 plus interest for overdue child-care expenses, and required that he pay the mother’s counsel fees. In an amended order, the Support Magistrate specified the exact amount of counsel fees.
Before the amended order was entered, the father’s counsel filed a notice of appeal from the Support Magistrate’s original order. The father’s counsel filed written objections to the Sup
We will consider the father’s appeal despite the defects in his notice of appeal. Although no appeal lies from an order that has been amended—because the amended order supercedes the original order—dismissal of the appeal is unnecessary where the amendment is immaterial to the appeal (see Matter of Fullam v Fullam, 39 AD3d 897, 897 n [2007], lv denied 9 NY3d 802 [2007]; see also Adams v Daughtery, 110 AD3d 1454, 1455 [2013]; People v Russo, 68 AD3d 1437, 1437 n 1 [2009]). We ignore that defect here, because the order was only amended to include the specific amount of counsel fees and that aspect of the order is not at issue on appeal (see CPLR 5520 [c]; see also Matter of Loomis v Yu-Jen G., 81 AD3d 1083, 1084 [2011]; Matter of Michaela PP. [Derwood PP.], 67 AD3d 1083, 1084 n [2009]). More problematic is that an appeal does not lie from a Support Magistrate’s order; the proper procedure is to file objections and then, if necessary, appeal from Family Court’s order ruling on the objections (see Family Ct Act § 439 [e]). This Court has the discretion to treat a notice of appeal as valid despite the notice being premature or containing an inaccurate description of the order being appealed (see CPLR 5520 [c]; see also CPLR 5512 [permitting court to deem appeal taken from proper order if timely appeal is taken from something other than an appeal-able paper, no prejudice results and the proper paper is furnished to the appellate court]). Under the circumstances here, and inasmuch as the errors in filing an inaccurate notice of appeal were attributable to the father’s counsel, we will treat the notice of appeal as validly appealing from Family Court’s order dismissing the objections.
Family Court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing the objections filed by the father’s counsel. While the court had discretion to overlook counsel’s failure to timely file proof of service of objections on the opposing party—despite such filing being required by statute (see Family Ct Act § 439 [e])—we cannot find it to be an abuse of discretion for a court to demand that a party adhere to the statutory requirements (see Matter of Riley v Riley, 84 AD3d 1473, 1474 [2011]). On the other hand, the court improperly dismissed the father’s pro se objections. The court apparently relied upon 22 NYCRR 130-1. la, which
Ordered that the order is reversed, on the law, without costs, and matter remitted to the Family Court of Broome County for further proceedings not inconsistent with this Court’s decision.