How to Legally and Properly End a Domestic Partnership  in Orange County

People ask us all the time if domestic partnership dissolution is different from regular divorce. The short answer? Not really. California treats registered domestic partnerships exactly like marriages when it comes to ending them. Same forms, same rules, same headaches.

The only real difference is that domestic partnerships can sometimes be terminated through a simple administrative process if you meet certain requirements – no kids, married less than five years, limited assets and debts. But if you’ve got property, retirement accounts, or children together, you’re looking at the full court process just like married couples.

Once the petition is filed with the court, several restrictions and deadlines are immediately imposed on the couple ending their relationship. The person who files the initial request is known as the Petitioner and the other person is called the Respondent.

Here’s what catches people off guard: the minute those papers get filed with the court, you both lose the right to do whatever you want with your money and property. It doesn’t matter if your partner doesn’t know about the filing yet – the restrictions start immediately for both of you.

Automatic Restraining Orders 

The first restriction is found on the second page of the Summons and is known as the Automatic Temporary Restraining Orders (“ATRO”), which are found in Family Code § 2040. These restrictions are imposed on both spouses or domestic partners and remain in effect until the petition is “dismissed, a judgment is entered, or the court makes further orders.”

Don’t let the word “automatic” fool you – these restraining orders have real teeth. We’ve seen people lose their entire retirement account because they thought they could cash it out before their partner found out about the divorce.

A few of the ATRO restrictions prohibit parents from removing children from the state, or applying for a passport for the children, “cashing, borrowing against, cancelling, transferring, disposing of, or changing the beneficiaries of insurance, including life, health, automobile and disability” insurance.

The insurance one trips people up constantly. You can’t drop your partner from health insurance, even if you’re furious with them. You can’t change the beneficiaries on your life insurance to cut them out. People think they’re being smart by doing these things early, but they’re actually violating court orders.

The ATROs also prohibit the “transferring, encumbering, …, concealing, or in any way disposing of any property, real or personal, whether community, quasi-community, or separate, without the written consent of the other party or an order of the court, except in the usual course of business or for the necessities of life”.

“Usual course of business” and “necessities of life” are the key phrases here. You can still buy groceries and pay the mortgage. You can’t liquidate your investment accounts or sell the house without permission or a court order.

You must also “notify each other of any proposed extraordinary expenditures at least five business days prior to incurring these extraordinary expenditures and account to the court for all extraordinary expenditures”.

What’s “extraordinary”? Anything unusual for your lifestyle. If you normally spend $200 on dinner, that’s probably fine. If you suddenly want to spend $5,000 on a vacation, you need to give five days’ notice.

These restrictions are designed to maintain the status quo while the relationship is being dissolved and there are significant penalties for violation of these restraining orders, including the potential loss of 100% of any asset disposed of in violation of the ATRO.

That penalty isn’t a typo – 100%. We’ve seen judges award the entire retirement account to the other spouse because someone violated the ATROs. Courts don’t mess around with this stuff.

Deadlines

Deadlines that are immediately imposed including a requirement that the Petition, Summons and other documents be personally served (in most cases) on the other party within 60 calendar days and that the other party, once served, then file a response within 30 calendar days.

The 60-day service deadline gets people in trouble. You can’t just file and then sit on the papers for months. If you don’t serve within 60 days, the court can dismiss your case and you’ll have to start over.

Financial Disclosure

The next set of deadlines pertain to the disclosure of assets and debts, so that each side understands the full nature of the finances of the partnership. In fact, the Court will treat both sides as if they were running a business partnership, and the fiduciary duties owed to the other partner come straight out of California Corporations Code §§ 16403 and 16404.

This business partnership comparison isn’t just legal theory – it has real consequences. You owe your partner the same level of honesty and loyalty that business partners owe each other. That’s a pretty high standard.

Fiduciary duties owed to the other partner are among the most serious obligations imposed by the Court and include things like a duty of loyalty to the other partner regarding dealings with community assets and debts, providing the other party with access to financial records, notice of changes to the assets and debts, and providing a complete accounting of all partnership assets.

What this means in plain English: you can’t hide money, you can’t lie about assets, and you have to share financial information even if you don’t want to. Some people think they can get cute with money during divorce. Bad idea.

Violations of these obligations are known as breaches of fiduciary duty and can be punished severely by the Court, including the loss of 100% of the asset and the imposition of significant attorney fees, which often run into thousands of dollars.

We’ve seen fiduciary duty violations cost people their houses, their businesses, and tens of thousands in attorney fees. The penalties are designed to hurt, and they do.

Paperwork

There are two sets of financial disclosures that must be made by each side, which are discussed in Family Code §§ 2104 and 2105. These disclosures are the Preliminary and Final Declarations of disclosure and require that you provide a significant amount of backup documentation relating to real property, vehicles, checking and savings accounts, investments, and debts to name a few categories.

The disclosure requirements are extensive and detailed. Bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs, retirement account statements, credit card statements, loan documents – pretty much every financial document you have goes into these disclosures.

You must also serve an Income and Expense Declaration (FL-150) on the other party, setting forth your income, assets and living expenses. The Preliminary Declaration of Disclosure must be exchanged within 60 calendar days of the filing of the Petition and the Response.

People underestimate how much work these disclosures require. We’re talking about months of financial records, detailed asset descriptions, and supporting documentation for everything. It’s not unusual for these disclosures to be hundreds of pages long.

Why These Disclosures Actually Matter

Until the Preliminary Declaration of Disclosure is exchanged and notice is filed with the Court, the Court does not have the legal power to dissolve the relationship or change the marital status.

This isn’t just bureaucratic nonsense – the court literally cannot finalize your dissolution until these disclosures are complete. We’ve seen cases drag on for months because someone didn’t take the disclosure requirements seriously.

Depending on the circumstances of your case, you may decide to request additional information from your Ex, from their employer, or banks and other financial institutions before deciding on how to divvy up the assets and debts of the relationship, which can be done by mutual agreement or following a trial before the court.

Sometimes the initial disclosures reveal that someone hasn’t been completely honest about their finances. That’s when we start subpoenaing bank records, employer payroll information, and other third-party documents. It gets expensive fast, but sometimes it’s the only way to get the full financial picture.

There are also several other decisions that may need to be made in the interim, like obtaining child custody / visitation orders or financial support orders.

Just because your dissolution isn’t final doesn’t mean life stops. Kids need support, someone needs to live somewhere, and bills need to get paid. Courts can make temporary orders for all of these issues while the main case is pending.

The key is getting these temporary issues resolved quickly so you can focus on the bigger picture of dividing assets and finalizing the dissolution. Let the temporary stuff drag on, and it can poison the entire process.