On January 1, 2010, California law will change to help prevent spouses from obstructing the completion of a divorce by failing or refusing to satisfy disclosure requirements. Assembly Bill 459 does not change the disclosure requirements themselves, but adds "an additional option" for when one party who has complied with the rule but the other has not. Here is how the Legislative Counsel's Digest explains the bill:
Existing law requires each party to a proceeding for dissolution of marriage or legal separation of the parties to serve on the other party a preliminary declaration of disclosure of assets, as specified, and a final declaration of disclosure, as specified, unless service of the final disclosure is waived. Existing law requires each party to serve a preliminary declaration of disclosure after or concurrently with service of the petition for dissolution or nullity of marriage, or legal separation of the parties. If a party fails to serve a preliminary or final declaration of disclosure, as specified, or fails to provide information required in those declarations with sufficient particularity, if the other party has served the respective declaration of disclosure, and if the noncomplying party also fails to comply with a request for the preparation of the appropriate declaration of disclosure or further particularity, existing law authorizes the complying party to file a motion to compel a further response or for an order preventing the noncomplying party from presenting evidence on issues that should have been covered in the declaration of disclosure.
Existing law generally prohibits entry of judgment with respect to the parties' property rights unless each party, or the attorney for that party, has executed and served a copy of the final declaration of disclosure and current income and expense declaration. Existing law requires a court to set aside a judgment when the parties have failed to comply with all disclosure requirements, as specified.
This bill would add, as an additional option that a complying party may pursue if the noncomplying party fails to comply with the request described above, the option to file a motion showing good cause to grant the complying party's voluntary waiver of receipt of the noncomplying party's disclosure, as specified. If that motion is granted, the bill would require the court to set aside a judgment only at the request of the complying party, unless the motion is based on actual fraud or perjury, as specified.
So AB 459 is designed to solve a problem that arises when both parties have appeared in the dissolution action but one of them refuses to provide the required disclosures: the court is not allowed to enter a judgment of dissolution. Under the new law, so long as one party complies, that party can ask the court to approve a waiver of the right to receive disclosures from the other party. But the noncomplying party has an incentive not to let this happen: if that waiver is approved, then only he complying party can have the judgment set aside, unless the request is based on "actual fraud" or "perjury." In other words, one spouse cannot hide assets, refuse to provide disclosures, and then turn around after the judgment is entered and try to have that judgment set aside—unless he or she can show that the complying party lied in his or her disclosures or committed some other kind of fraud that prevented the noncomplying party from complying.