Family Law, Special Fee Shifting Statute: Intermediate Appellate Courts Issue Several Family Law Or Neighborhood Disputes Opinions Where Fee Requests Were Granted Or Denied In Unpublished Decisions—Abuse Of Discretion Standard Guided All Of Them.

1.         Marriage of Harcke, Case No. B288727 (2d Dist., Div. 7 June 16, 2020) (unpublished).

            In this case, father was sanctioned for $15,400 in attorney’s fees for failure to be cooperative in settlement negotiations under Family Code section 271.   That was no abuse of discretion given that he “out of hand” and unequivocally rejected mother’s settlement offer to impute significant income to her for support, visitation, and other issues—not in the spirit of section 271.

2.         Taheri v. Chavooshi, Case No. B296876 (2d Dist., Div. 2 June 17, 2020) (unpublished).

            Here, after being presented with dueling domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) petitions, the lower court dismissed the male’s petition and refused to award discretionary attorney’s fees under Family Code section 6344(a).  Again, this was no abuse of discretion under all of the circumstances, given the trial judge found that each side had gone their own way and a fee award would have only rekindled ill will.

3.         Corso v. Bruhl, Case No. D075804 (4^th Dist., Div. 1 June 17, 2020) (unpublished) and  Corso v. Holtman, Case No. D075859 (4^th Dist., Div. 1 June 17, 2020) (unpublished).

            Finally, we have a two-fer.  Neighbor Corso sued two neighbors seeking civil restraining orders.  He lost both efforts, with the trial judge finding discrepancies between his petition declarations and hearing testimony.  In Bruhl, he suffered an adverse $10,000 fee award under the discretionary civil restraining order fee-shifting provision, CCP 527.6(s).  This was no abuse of discretion given the lack of a complete record of papers below and in light of the other side not asking for all incurred fees.  A somewhat similar result occurred in Holtman, where the lower court awarded $25,000 in fees, given that the other side actually incurred about $51,000 fees and smartly only asked for half of them (which happened to be the award).