Goes to Show You … Family Law Judges Have to Create More of a Record Than Civil Judges Do in Certain Fee Proceedings.
The present state of the law is that trial judges in most civil fee proceedings do not, we stress do not, have to provide a statement of decision in support of a fee award. (See, e.g., our very recent post on Taylor v. Nabors Drilling USA, LP, Case No. B241914 (2d Dist., Div. 6 Jan. 13, 2014) (published).) However, given fairly recent legislative amendments regarding family law needs-based awards (where factors do have to be expressly put on the record) and the importance of family law sanctions, appellate courts are requiring that trial judges “show their wares” in more than usual fashion.
Marriage of Callister, Case No. B242819 (2d Dist., Div. 7 Jan. 13, 2014) (unpublished) exemplifies this trend.
There, ex-husband and ex-wife got in a lot of credibility determinations when ex-wife moved to Utah and their son stayed in California, but with the trial judge determining ex-wife was less than credible on certain points. Eventually, the lower court awarded ex-husband a needs-based (Family Code section 2030/2032) award of $15,000 as well as fee sanctions of $30,000 (Family Code section 271, based on ex-wife prolonging proceedings and not being settlement oriented), payable $1,250 per month to ex-husband’s counsel.
The fee awards got reversed, not necessarily because they were wrong on the merits. The appellate court determined that the 271 sanctions had to be reversed because the lower court failed to find whether the $30,000 award was reasonable based on wife’s income, assets, and liabilities. With respect to the needs-based award of $15,000, the lack of findings about ex-wife’s ability to pay and the extent of her financial resources required an overturn on this as well.