Nothing Showed Any Error In The Lump Sum Payment, The Monthly Payments, Or Still Ordering Them Even Though Ex-Wife Was Cohabitating With Someone Else!
We have posted, very frequently, on Family Code section 2030 “needs-based” awards to spouses, which are pendente lite awards to spouses with financial disparity needing an award during a dissolution proceeding to “even the playing field” relating to a spouse with more resources. In the end, many of the results are equitably based, although financial data usually is provided to support such an award. This next case nicely encapsulates all of these principles.
In Heredia v. Heredia, Case No. B296823 (2d Dist., Div. 2 June 4, 2020) (unpublished), an ex-wife with tangibly lesser financial resources—following a settlement—moved to recover section 2030 fees of $93,000 against her ex-husband firefighter. The trial judge, after weighing financial submissions from each side, ordered ex-husband to pay ex-wife $45,000 – with $20,000 upfront and $1,000 a month for the next 25 months.
Ex-husband’s appeal of this order was unsuccessful. Ex-husband’s plea of not being able to meet the order was not helped by the fact that he had made large cash withdrawals of over $32,000, such that the appellate court had no problem inferring he could pay the $20,000 lump sum amount. With respect to the longer-term $1,000 monthly payments, he did work overtime routinely so that these earnings could be taken into account. Ex-husband then argued that ex-wife really did not need the assistance because she was cohabitating with someone else, but the appellate court observed that ex-husband offered no authority that the presumption applying in the spousal support context applied to section 2030 fees, not to mention that ex-wife still needed spousal support even with her “new mate’s” support.
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