Marriage of Pallais CA1/1

Filed 8/2/23 Marriage of Pallais CA1/1 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION ONE

In re the Marriage of CARLOS A. PALLAIS and ALAYA PALLAIS- PARISH.

CARLOS A. PALLAIS, A165281

Appellant, (Sonoma County v. Super. Ct. No. SFL085566) ALAYA PALLAIS-PARISH, Respondent.

Carlos A. Pallais (father), in propria persona, appeals from the trial court’s postjudgment order in his dissolution action against Alaya Pallais- Parish (mother). The Sonoma County Superior Court awarded mother child support and ordered coparent counseling, both of which father argues must be stricken due to the trial court’s alleged failure to consider his inability to pay and mother’s ability to pay. Father elected to proceed on appeal without a record of the oral proceedings in the trial court. By filing his appeal without a reporter’s transcript or equivalent substitute, father has provided us with an inadequate record. Therefore, we are unable to conduct a meaningful appellate review and reject each of father’s arguments. Accordingly, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND Our ability to understand fully the factual and procedural history of this case is hampered because of the sparse record on appeal, consisting of only father’s opening brief and a clerk’s transcript.1 The clerk’s transcript on appeal is meager, containing only nine documents, including father’s income and expense declaration. The record does not include a reporter’s transcript or a respondent’s appendix, nor was a respondent’s brief filed. We therefore summarize the factual and procedural history as best we can based on the record before us. Father is a server at a restaurant in Sonoma, and mother is unemployed. They were married on December 30, 2015, and have one child. They separated on March 18, 2018, and father filed a petition for dissolution of marriage on March 11, 2020. An attorney briefly represented father from the beginning of the proceedings in December 2020 until January 2021. An attorney represented mother from September 2020 until April 2021, and both parties appear to have continued since without legal representation. The Sonoma County Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) filed a motion to modify father’s monthly child support payment of $0 ordered on April 1, 2021, to the guideline amount of $681 generated based on father’s income and expense declaration of January 4, 2022. The trial court modified the child support to $650 on April 19, 2022, deviating from the guideline