11/14/23 Marriage of Naranjo and Soto-Naranjo CA2/6

11/14/23 Marriage of Naranjo and Soto-Naranjo CA2/6 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION SIX

In re Marriage of JORGE 2d Civ. No. B320681 NARANJO and CLAUDIA (Super. Ct. No. D354440 ) SOTO-NARANJO. (Ventura County)

JORGE NARANJO,

Respondent,

v.

CLAUDIA SOTO-NARANJO,

Appellant.

In dividing the parties’ community property, the trial court awarded husband Epstein credits for using his separate property to pay obligations on a community property warehouse. (In re Marriage of Epstein (1979) 24 Cal.3d 76 (Epstein). Wife appeals the award of the credits. But the matter is not appealable because there is no final judgment. We exercise our discretion to treat the attempted appeal as a petition for extraordinary writ.

We grant the petition. There is no evidence that husband’s payments from his separate property greatly exceeded the value of his use of the community property after separation. We issue the writ. FACTS Jorge Naranjo and Claudia Soto-Naranjo were married in 1999 and separated in 2013. Jorge1 and his brother each own 50 percent of the shares of a corporation that operates a Mexican restaurant in Oxnard (the Corporation). In 2008, Jorge, Claudia, Jorge’s brother, and Jorge’s brother’s wife purchased a warehouse in Oxnard. The warehouse was used to store restaurant supplies, as an office for the restaurant business and to host catered events and parties. The Corporation paid the mortgage and property taxes on the warehouse. It listed the payments as rent on its balance sheet. The rental payments listed on the balance sheet equaled the mortgage and tax payments for the warehouse. Income from the warehouse derived from event and party rentals, plus income from the rental of a portion of the warehouse to a gym, were deposited in the Corporation’s account. Claudia did not receive any of the income. After the parties separated, the Corporation continued to pay the mortgage and taxes and received all the income. The parties stipulated that after the parties separated in January 2013, until the warehouse was sold in December 2018, the Corporation paid $601,416 in mortgage payments and $63,096 in property taxes. The sale of the warehouse produced a net profit for the parties of $183,898.