Family Law: $13,000 Monthly Permanent Spousal Support Order And $175,000 Fees Order Under Needs-Based/Section 271 Grounds Reversed Where Lower Court Failed To Consider Totality Of Ex-Husband’s Ability To Pay Factors

Reversal of Spousal Support Order Parlayed Into Reversal Of Fees Order.

            In Kuo v. Liu, Case No. A164928 (1^st Dist., Div. 2 Feb. 21, 2023) (unpublished), ex-husband was hit with a $13,000 monthly permanent spousal support payments and a $175,000 fees award to ex-wife under the needs-based Family Code provisions and Family Code section 271.

            Those awards got reversed on appeal.  The problems with the spousal support awards, which also infected the fee award, were two-fold in nature:  (1) the support award was based on stale numbers 8 years earlier; and (2) the gifts and loans by ex-husband’s parents were not shown to be recurrent or continuing in nature.  The fee award by the lower court was not nuanced enough on ex-husband’s ability to pay—a key factor under Family Code section 2030, 2032, and 271—given he was living paycheck by paycheck at the time of the award, his parents’ funding had dried up, and ex-wife obtained significant loans from her parents to fund her dissolution efforts.