Husband Failed to Disclose Finances Within His Control Despite Prior Discovery Attempts; Wife Got Affirmance Based on Extension of Doctrine to Family Law.
For all of you family law (and even possibly civil law) practitioners, here is a fee award affirmance based on the appellate “disentitlement” doctrine.
Marriage of Hofer, Case No. B228461 (2d Dist., Div. 6 Aug. 13, 2012) (published) is a situation where husband was ordered to pay $200,000 in Family Code section 2030 (needs based) fees to wife because he failed to disclose financial circumstances within his knowledge even after evading discovery orders on finances and paying sanctions for not being financially forthright.
The fee award was affirmed.
Equities? Less financially solvent wife incurred $165,000 in fees, paying only $48,000 of this amount. On the other side, husband actually paid his attorneys about $300,000 in fees during the dissolution action.
On appeal, the appellate court, in a decision authored by Presiding Justice Gilbert, invoked the “disentitlement” doctrine, which allows the appellate court to dismiss an appeal for equitable reasons–in this case, husband’s failure to disclose finances, hardly an abuse of discretion when he paid his own attorneys $300,000 already.