Pope v. Pope

[538]

PETERS, P. J.

In 1947, after 13 years of marriage, appellant filed suit for divorce. His wife, the respondent, cross-complained, first for separate maintenance, and later for a divorce. After a long and spirited trial, the wife was granted a divorce on the grounds of the cruelty and the habitual intemperance of her husband. In addition, the trial court awarded the wife $3,072.12 costs, $2,000 a month alimony terminable only on her death or remarriage, and $100,000 as her share of the community property. The husband thereupon appealed from those portions of the interlocutory and final judgments apportioning the community property, and awarding her alimony. Thereupon, the wife’s present counsel were brought into the case, and moved for counsel fees in the amount of $20,000 to enable the wife adequately to defend the appeal. The trial court, after a hearing, allowed the wife $15,000 for counsel fees on the appeal. The husband appeals, contending that the amount awarded was excessive.

The defense of the appeal was successfully handled by the attorneys here involved, and resulted in an affirmance of the judgment, except as to a minor portion thereof relating to certain personal possessions.

(Pope

v.

Pope,

102 Cal.App.2d 353 [227 P.2d 867].)

Appellant husband seeks to minimize the complexity of •his appeal- in the divorce action, urging that, as far as respondent was concerned, only simple matters were involved that required no particular legal ability or skill to handle. Although he made no such admission in his briefs or argument on that appeal, but to the contrary strenuously urged the merits of his then contentions, the husband would now have us believe that his then appeal was practically frivolous.

Wé are well aware of the difficult problems facing the attorneys for the wife on that appeal. The trial court simply had found, without allocation, that the community property exceeded $150,000, and awarded a flat sum of $100,000 to the wife. It failed to designate which items of the $1,700,000 of property in the possession of the husband made up the $150,000 of community property. One of the major contentions on that appeal was that these findings were unsupported by the evidence, and that whatever community property existed had been entirely consumed by the parties’ living expenses. These parties had been married 13 years. The husband’s business transactions during this period had been extremely complicated. He had been evasive at the trial and his records, some of which he had destroyed, were