Court Opinion

ID: 9617678
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:59:44.699082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:14.387178
License: Public Domain

PEEK, Acting P. J.
I dissent. The apparent premise of the majority opinion is that since “there was no demand in the instant case that defendant pay the community obligations ; hence the relief accorded not only exceeded the demand it adjudicated a matter not even asserted, claimed or prayed for,” and that the trial court “wholly lacked jurisdiction to render a judgment affecting the community obligations.”
This is not a case where a defaulting defendant who, without notice that the community property of the parties will be adjudicated, is therefore taken by surprise by the order of the court as was the situation presented in the Burtnett case, the one primarily relied upon in the majority opinion.
Here the plaintiff itemized with particularity the nature and extent of the community property and prayed that she be *569awarded her share. Factually the present case appears to me to be much more similar to that of Bowman v. Bowman, 29 Cal.2d 808 [178 P.2d 751]. Since the appeal is on the judgment roll alone and all intendments are in favor of the verity of the judgment, it may well have been that here, as in the Bowman case, there was testimony by plaintiff that if the husband were ordered to pay the debts she would waive alimony since such an award would give her the unobstructed use of the property and thus enable her to maintain a home for herself and the minor child of the parties. The award would thereby take on the nature of alimony and would be within the jurisdiction of the court to make under the decision in the Burtnett case. It also must be noted that the order adds nothing to what the defendant was already obligated to pay and hence he can show no damage resulting therefrom.
In the early case of Frankel v. Boyd, 106 Cal. 608, 614 [39 P. 939], it was held that the statutory authority given a court to award community property must be construed as meaning the residue of such property after the payment of the existing debts of the husband contracted upon the faith of such property. If, as the court therein concluded, the community property to be distributed must be considered as the residue which remains after the discharge of the community debts, how then can it be said that the disposition of the community debts as ordered by the trial court in this case was something wholly outside of the issues and without the jurisdiction of the court? (See also Hill v. Hill, 150 Cal.App.2d 34 [309 P.2d 44]; McKannay v. McKannay, 68 Cal.App. 701 [230 P. 214]; Farmers Exch. Nat. Bank v. Drew, 48 Cal.App. 442 [192 P. 105].)
I would affirm the judgment.