Secondary practice area
Fourth District reverses Family Code section 271 sanctions for refusing to convert legal separation into dissolution and reverses a mutual DVRO that lacked substantial evidence of the wife as primary aggressor.
First District affirms juvenile court jurisdiction but reverses removal of an infant from a mother with serious mental illness because the agency did not show reasonable efforts to prevent removal.
Fourth District affirms a pet custody order but imposes $5,000 in sanctions on counsel for repeatedly citing AI-generated fake cases and reports the conduct to the State Bar of California.
Fourth District reverses a five-year DVRO for the second time, holding the trial court again denied the incarcerated respondent meaningful access to the courts by issuing the order without addressing his request to appear telephonically.
Fourth District affirms a juvenile court’s joint-and-several restitution order, holding the January 2025 amendment to Welfare and Institutions Code section 730.6 — which replaced joint-and-several liability with several liability based on percentage of fault — does not apply retroactively to a case that became final before the amendment took effect.
Second District holds that a juvenile court ordering monitored visitation by a paid professional must first consider the parent’s ability to pay and the availability of reasonable alternatives, where the parent has timely raised an inability-to-pay objection.
Second District holds that California’s prohibition on parental contractual waiver of child-support arrearages applies even after the children have reached the age of majority and there is no current support order in place.
First District reverses a trial-court order that bound a wife to the date of separation alleged in her amended dissolution petition, holding that allegation was not a judicial admission where the parties had treated a different date as in dispute throughout the litigation.
Second District reverses denial of a domestic violence restraining order, holding the trial court applied the wrong legal standard in evaluating whether the petitioner’s ex-wife’s conduct — repeated stalking, threats, and unwanted entries — constituted abuse under the Domestic Violence Prevention Act.
Second District applies In re Dezi C.’s substantial-evidence review and holds that DCFS’s failure to interview the paternal grandfather did not undermine an ICWA inquiry that included both parents and seven other paternal relatives.