However, Appealing Ex-Wife Not Awarded Costs On Appeal For Failure To Direct Trial Court’s Attention To This Omission.
Since 2010, needs-based requests for attorney’s fees by family law litigants require family law judges to make findings on whether there is a disparity in access to funds by one party and whether the responding party has the financial resources for representation by both sides. In two published decisions since then, appellate courts have stressed the mandatory nature of this legislative pronouncement. (See In re Marriage of Shimkus, 244 Cal.App.4th 1266, 1279-1280 (2016) [4/3 DCA]; In re Marriage of Morton, 27 Cal.App.5th 1025, 1030 (2018) [5th Dist.].)
What happened in Marriage of Aldridge, Case No. G055666 (4th Dist., Div. 3 March 22, 2019) (unpublished) is that a family law judge, commendably trying to end a case, denied a section 271 sanction request (a determination which was affirmed) and awarded a small amount of needs-based fees to ex-wife under section 2030 without making any of the required findings (a determination which was reversed). The appellate court could not find this error to be harmless in nature given that wife did submit financial data showing she was unemployed. Although that required a reversal and remand, the appellate panel—in an opinion penned by Acting Presiding Justice Bedsworth—did not award appellate costs to ex-wife because she could have brought this omission to the lower court’s attention.