You are facing a divorce, and you already know it will not be a normal one. Perhaps you are still deciding whether to file, and you know from years of experience that your spouse will turn every step into a fight. Perhaps you are in the middle of the case, your own lawyer is urging you to accept a settlement that frightens you, and you want a second opinion before you sign anything. Or perhaps the case has already escalated, there is a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) on the table and accusations on both sides, and you have realized that this will turn into a trial and that you need a lawyer who regularly does DVRO trials.
This article explains what a high-conflict divorce in California actually involves, why the strategies that work in an ordinary divorce fail in these cases, and how these cases are fought and won.
High-Conflict Divorce: The Short Answer
A high-conflict divorce is one in which at least one party treats the litigation as a continuation of the marital conflict that defined the marriage. These cases have recognizable features as they often involve domestic violence restraining orders; allegations of abuse that may be true, exaggerated, or fabricated; reports to Child Protective Services (CPS); hidden assets, secret money transfers, and undisclosed foreign businesses; custody litigation driven by leverage; and child and spousal support battles that have little to do with actual economic need.
These cases are won differently than ordinary divorces. The early moves matter most, and in particular the decision about whether and when to seek a DVRO, because the first orders set the structure of custody and the case. Evidence must be gathered and preserved from the first day, because credibility will be contested at every hearing. The finances require forensic investigation rather than routine disclosure review, because in these cases money is very often being concealed. Your attorney must be genuinely prepared to take the case to trial, because the other side will only settle reasonably when they believe they will lose in court. A high- conflict case handled this way can sometimes be resolved quickly. Unfortunately, however, the same case handled like an ordinary divorce can continue for years.
Most Divorces Should Not Be Fought This Way
Before high-conflict divorce is discussed further, you should know that this is not how most divorce cases should be approached. If you and your spouse can still communicate and both of you want a fair and simple resolution, you do not need the approach this article describes, and you should not pay for it.
California law offers cooperative and collaborative paths to divorce and it encourages the parties to fairly and equitably resolve their divorce with as little conflict as possible. In an uncontested or cooperative divorce, the parties exchange complete financial disclosures, negotiate the property division and any support directly or through counsel, and submit an agreed judgment. Many of these cases resolve without anyone arguing in front of a judge. In a formal collaborative divorce, both parties and their attorneys commit in writing to resolve the case outside of court, often with the help of neutral financial and child specialists. These
approaches are faster, far less expensive, and far easier on children, and when a case is suited to them, we believe this is the optimal way to resolve a divorce case.
However, this cooperative approach to divorce depends on one condition: two people acting in good faith who are willing to reasonably compromise. A cooperative process cannot survive a participant who hides money, coaches children, files false allegations, or uses every exchange as an opportunity for control. Some divorces cannot be resolved cooperatively because one party will not allow it. Those are the high-conflict cases this article is about.
What Makes A Divorce “High-Conflict”?
The term high-conflict divorce does not describe how much the parties argue. Reasonable disagreement over divorce is perfectly normal and can be effectively resolved through calm negotiation with no court intervention in most cases. However, “high-conflict divorce” describes a situation in which the litigation itself is often being used as an instrument of control, often mirroring the dynamics of the marriage itself. In our practice at Vijay Law, nearly every high-conflict case includes a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) component, and most include several of the following: allegations of domestic violence or child abuse, a race to the courthouse for the first custody order, reports to CPS timed near hearings, a claimed job loss that appears when support is being calculated, money moving to accounts and properties the other spouse has never heard of, undisclosed assets in foreign countries, and a pattern in which every agreement is violated or reopened as soon as it is made.
There is also a psychological dimension to high-conflict divorce, and it deserves to be identified because clients usually experience it as a distinct part of their divorce process. Many high-conflict divorces involve a spouse for whom the marriage was about control and for whom the divorce becomes about not losing. Whether or not any clinical label applies, the pattern is consistent: charm in public, aggression in private, refusal to accept any outcome that resembles losing, and a willingness to use the children, the money, and the court process itself as tools of control and manipulation. Living through this court process can be exhausting. Clients describe sleepless nights, dread before every custody exchange, and constant second-guessing of their own memory of events. Part of our role as your attorney is to take over the fight so that our client can function, and to keep the case moving according to strategy rather than according to the other side's provocations. A person in this situation needs an advocate who is not worn down by the conflict and who does not respond to it emotionally.
What A High-Conflict Divorce Actually Looks Like
In order to better understand what a high-conflict divorce case looks like in practice, below we describe two high-conflict cases Vijay Law recently handled.
A client in a high-conflict divorce case came to us for a second opinion. Both parties were Indian nationals in the United States on H-1B visas, with a young child. The abuse our client had suffered during the marriage was repeated, serious, and violent, and when the other
parent began threatening to take the child to India, our client's previous law firm filed a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) and initially obtained full custody. The other side then hired an aggressive attorney, filed a competing DVRO, and at the first hearing obtained additional time with the child.
By the time the client met with us, their own attorney was recommending a deal: drop the DVRO in exchange for what is often called a “non-CLETS order”. The client was frightened by the advice, because they believed the other parent was genuinely dangerous to their young daughter. We reviewed the facts and allegations and advised our client that the case should go to trial. After being hired, we prepared for the DVRO trial and after a two-day trial with eight witnesses, the court granted our client's DVRO and denied the other party’s DVRO request.
Unfortunately, winning the DVRO trial did not end the litigation in this high-conflict case. Two weeks after the hearing, the other parent announced they had to travel to India because their mother was gravely ill. Then from India, they claimed they had lost their U.S. technology job and asked the court to reduce child and spousal support to zero. They also claimed they could not return to the United States because the Indian government had impounded their passport in connection with a dowry complaint filed by our client's family. Based on the claimed job loss, the court temporarily suspended support.
We then developed evidence that the claimed job loss was not what it appeared to be and that the other parent had played a role in their own unemployment. We retained a vocational expert, obtained a vocational evaluation, and established the other parent's actual earning capacity. At trial on the support issues, the court imputed income to the other parent at the level of their former position and awarded child and spousal support retroactively. Because we had also traced the marriage's finances, we were able to show the court that substantial money had been transferred to India throughout the marriage and that undisclosed real estate had been purchased there. The court's final orders addressed the concealed assets and awarded our client attorney's fees. At that point the other side largely stopped contesting the case. Our client finished with full custody, the property orders, and the protection they had originally been advised to give up. That past case contains the competing restraining orders, the settlement pressure, the contested trial, the claimed job loss, the imputed income, the hidden foreign assets, and the fee award. Each of those subjects is addressed below, because a high-conflict divorce is several disputes running at the same time, and they have to be handled as one coordinated case.
How Does A DVRO Often Set The Structure Of A High Conflict Divorce Case? In a high-conflict case, the domestic violence restraining order is usually the opening move by one side or the other, and it often shapes everything that follows. A granted DVRO can determine who lives in the home, who has the children, and – through the custody presumption discussed below – who can win custody. We have written about these cases in detail from both sides, in our articles on DVROS in California.
A few points matter most when the DVRO exist within a divorce case.
Why Filing A DVRO Is Often The First Thing You Should Do In A Divorce Case If you have genuinely been abused, filing a DVRO is generally the first order of business which should be filed before or together with the divorce petition. The order of filing matters. The party who establishes the protective orders early litigates the rest of the case from a position of strength. As we explained in the DVRO articles, hesitation gives the other side the opportunity to file first and forces you into a defensive posture.
If The Other Side Files A DVRO First, Responding Is Often Not Enough In our second case, described below, we will see why it is not enough to simply respond to the other party’s DVRO request. Instead, the proper response is to file one’s own DVRO request because often you are the actual victim of domestic violence and your high conflict spouse did what many abusers do: they played the role of victim to gain advantage.
A Note On “Non-CLETS Orders”
Often the other side in a high conflict case attempts to get an abuse victim to drop their DVRO by offering them a “non-CLETS order” All domestic violence restraining orders (DVROs) are entered into the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS) which is statewide records database that allows authorized law enforcement entities to access the record of the active restraining order. If they determine that a restraining party in the CLETS system has violated a restraining order, they are required to make an arrest. This is a real and genuine protection offered to abuse victims.
We often see an offer to drop the CLETS DVRO in high-conflict settlement negotiations, and many people, including some lawyers, do not fully understand what is being given up. A non- CLETS order is a stay-away agreement entered as a stipulation of the parties. It is enforceable by the court through contempt proceedings, but it is not entered into CLETS, the statewide law enforcement database. This means if the other party violates a DVRO by appearing at your home, the police can verify the order in the database and arrest them on the spot. With a non-CLETS order, there is no database entry and no arrest on that basis. Thus your remedy is to return to court afterward and pursue contempt which can be time consuming and difficult. In addition, because a non-CLETS order is a stipulation rather than a judicial finding of domestic violence, it carries none of the legal consequences that follow from a normal DVRO, including the custody presumption under California Family Code section 3044 discussed below. For a party accused of abuse, agreeing to a non-CLETS order can be a sensible resolution. For a genuine victim with a genuinely dangerous ex-partner, trading a real DVRO for a non- CLETS agreement means giving up the police enforcement and the custody consequences at the same time. That was the trade our client in the case above was being urged to accept. Whether it is ever the right trade depends entirely on the facts, which is why the decision deserves careful analysis and, in some cases, a second opinion.
What Happens When The Other Side Files A DVRO First?
A second recent case from our practice at Vijay Law shows the opposite starting position, when the other side files a DVRO first, and how quickly it can be reversed if the correct steps are taken. The other parent filed a DVRO against our client first and obtained full custody of the parties' two children with the initial orders. By the time our client came to us, the other side's attorney had already conveyed a proposal to our client: no custody for our client, and an asset division that was plainly unfair. The other side wanted to resolve the entire case quickly but on entirely unfair terms while our client was in a severely disadvantaged position. The unfairness was compounded by the fact that our client earned far less than the other party and had no knowledge of the other party's finances. Defending against the pending DVRO was necessary, but it was not sufficient. Our client had been the victim of physical violence in the relationship, and the children were at risk, so we filed our client's own restraining order request with the abuse and the children's circumstances fully documented. Our DVRO request was granted pending hearing but the initial custody orders were kept in place until the first hearing of the case. At the first hearing the court ordered an emergency screening on our request, a focused custody evaluation in which both parents and both children were interviewed and a recommendation was prepared. The recommendation was 50/50 custody pending any DVRO trial, and the court adopted this recommendation. The advantage the other side had built by filing first, which consisted of full custody and a settlement posture built on that custody, was reversed at the first hearing.
The rest of the case followed from that initial reversal of the initial custody orders. With the custody leverage gone and their own DVRO now facing a genuine contest, the other side lost its appetite for extended litigation. Our client had no desire for a long war either as they simply wanted their children and a fair outcome. The parties agreed to withdraw both DVRO requests, entered a reasonable spousal support order for our client, and jointly retained a single forensic accountant to fairly and efficiently identify, value, and divide the assets. The entire case concluded in about six months, at a small fraction of what years of litigation would have cost.
This case is the counterpart to the first one, and the comparison teaches something important. Fighting well does not always mean fighting for long. The early reversal of the other side's leverage, together with a demonstrated willingness to try the case, is exactly what made a fast and fair settlement possible.
Child Custody In A High-Conflict Divorce
For most parents, custody is the most important issue in the case, and in high-conflict litigation it is contested with tools that are worth understanding in advance.
- How The Domestic Violence Restraining Order Often Controls Custody Under California Family Code section 3044, when a court finds that a parent has committed domestic violence against the other parent or the children within the previous five years, a rebuttable presumption arises that awarding that parent sole or joint custody is detrimental to the child.. Once the factual finding is made, custody cannot be awarded to that parent unless the presumption is overcome. This is why the DVRO contest and the custody contest are, in practice, often the same contest, and why parties in these cases move quickly to be the first accuser.
- How CPS Reports Can Affect Custody Cases Reports to Child Protective Services (CPS) may be made before the family case is filed or during it, and in high-conflict cases they are sometimes timed close to hearings. Courts take every allegation seriously, as they should. Experienced family judges also understand that false and exaggerated allegations are a documented feature of custody disputes. When an accusation is fabricated, speed matters. We work quickly to assemble the evidence that exposes a false claim, including by interviewing witnesses, retaining experts, and treating as this as the very serious allegation that it is. A child abuse allegation can also create parallel criminal exposure for the accused parent, a subject we cover in our article on preventing child abuse charges from being filed. The family case and the criminal exposure must be handled together, because the complete picture often exists only when both proceedings are viewed at once.
- Move-Away Disputes High-conflict cases produce a disproportionate share of move-away fights, in which one parent seeks to relocate with the children to another county, another state, or another country. The governing standards come from the California Supreme Court's decisions in In re Marriage of Burgess and In re Marriage of LaMusga. A parent with primary custody has a presumptive right to relocate with the child, but the court examines whether the move would cause detriment to the child, considering factors that include the children's ties and stability, the reasons for the move, the distance, and the effect on the child's relationship with the other parent. Where a final custody order already exists, the objecting parent must make a threshold showing of detriment before a full evidentiary hearing is required. For our cross-border clients, the move- away question often carries an additional dimension: a proposed or threatened relocation to India or China, where enforcement of California orders operates very differently. Threats to take a child abroad, like the threat in our first case above, are taken seriously by California courts and can support protective orders and abduction- prevention conditions.
The Financial Case: Hidden Assets, Support, and Imputed Income
While the custody issues receive the most attention, the financial issues are frequently where the largest amount of conflict in these high-conflict cases exists.
Financial Concealment Occurs In Most High-Conflict Divorce Cases
In nearly every genuinely high-conflict case we handle, some version of the same pattern appears: transfers to accounts the other spouse has never seen, money moved abroad during the marriage, an undisclosed business operating on the side, property purchased in another country, and income understated to the family and sometimes to the tax authorities. Fortunately, California family law is built to address this.
Divorcing spouses owe each other fiduciary duties and must exchange sworn financial disclosures during the case. In California, the remedies for financial concealment are severe. Where a spouse is found to have deliberately concealed a community asset, the court can award up to the entire concealed asset to the innocent spouse. That remedy, however, is only available if you are able to discover this financial concealment. This is why we use the best forensic accountants and investigators in the Bay Area to trace financial transfers, reconstruct income, and locate assets that were never disclosed, both domestically and overseas. In our first case above, that investigation is what produced the final orders addressing years of concealed transfers and undisclosed foreign property.
Child Support
Per California Family Code section 4055, California child support is set by a statewide guideline formula driven principally by two inputs: the parents' respective incomes and the percentage of time each parent has the children (timeshare). Understanding this formula explains one of the most common dynamics in high-conflict custody litigation. A parent who fights intensely for 50% custody does not always want to spend half of their time parenting. In some cases, the real objective is the support consequence, because a higher timeshare means receiving more support or paying less. Judges are aware that this dynamic exists, but it must be proven with evidence rather than asserted. Recognizing when a custody battle is actually a support battle changes how the case should be prepared and litigated, and it is one of the clearest illustrations of why the custody issues and the financial issues in these cases cannot be handled in isolation.
Claimed Job Losses & Imputed Income
Another common financial move in these cases is the sudden change in circumstances. For instance, job lost at the moment support is being calculated, a profitable business that begins reporting losses, or a departure abroad. California courts are not required to accept these claims at face value. Where a parent or spouse has the ability and the opportunity to earn, the court can impute income based on earning capacity rather than on claimed actual income. Proving earning capacity requires the retention of a competent vocational expert. In our first case discussed above, we retained a vocational expert who conducted a full vocational evaluation, and the court imputed income at the level of the other parent's former technology position, with support awarded retroactively. The claimed job loss ultimately did not reduce the support obligation. It did, however, permanently damage the other side's credibility with the court.
Spousal Support: Temporary & Long-Term Support
Two different systems govern spousal support, and high-conflict parties should know the difference between them. While the case is pending, temporary support, also called “pendente lite support”, is typically set by a guideline-style calculation based on the parties' incomes and is designed to preserve the marital status pending while the divorce goes on. Long-term support, set after trial, is determined differently. The court must weigh the factors listed in Family Code section 4320, fourteen enumerated factors that include each party's earning capacity and marketable skills, contributions to the other party's education and career, the marital standard of living, the length of the marriage, each party's age and health, documented domestic violence between the parties, tax consequences, the balance of hardships, and the goal of self-sufficiency within a reasonable period. Domestic violence appears expressly among those factors, and Family Code section 4325 adds a presumption against awarding support to a spouse who has a qualifying domestic violence conviction against the other party. In a high-conflict case, the long-term support trial is often where the evidence developed across the entire case, including the abuse findings, the concealment, and the imputed income, is finally translated into the support orders.
Why High-Conflict Cases Require A Trial Attorney
Everything described above points in the same direction. High-conflict divorces are decided at contested hearings: the DVRO trial, contested custody hearings, the support trial, the concealment claim. These contested trials turn on cross-examination, on burdens of proof, and on whether a fabricated account survives confrontation with documents and timelines. That requires an experienced trial attorney who is prepared to go to trial. Our family practice grew directly out of criminal trial experience, and for that reason every family case we take is prepared from the first day as if it will be tried. This trial preparation has a second function beyond winning trials. Opposing attorneys know which lawyers actually try cases and which ones settle under pressure, and they advise their clients accordingly. The side that is genuinely ready for trial is, in our experience, the side that ultimately receives the best settlement offers.
Frequently Asked Questions About High-Conflict Divorce In California
What Makes A Divorce "High-Conflict"?
A case is high-conflict not based on the amount of arguing, but the use of the litigation itself as an instrument: restraining orders and abuse allegations that may be true or false, tactically timed CPS reports, concealed assets, custody positions driven by leverage, and an opposing party for whom no agreement is final.
My lawyer Is Pressuring Me To Take A Deal That Scares Me. Is A Second Opinion Appropriate? Yes, and this is very common. Settlement is often the right outcome, but some recommended deals, such as trading a genuine DVRO for a non-CLETS agreement, carry consequences that
a client should fully understand before accepting. A second opinion either confirms the advice or identifies a serious problem, and either result is worth knowing.
Can My Spouse Take Our Child To India Or Another Country?
Not lawfully without your consent or a court order. Where there is a credible risk of abduction, California courts can impose protective conditions, including passport controls and supervised exchanges. Threats to remove a child abroad should be documented and raised with the court immediately, because they can support a restraining order and shape the custody orders. Cross-border custody is a core part of our practice at Vijay Law.
What If I think My Spouse Is Hiding Money?
In a high-conflict case you should treat financial concealment as likely until the finances are actually proven. Sworn disclosures are mandatory, deliberate concealment can cost the hiding spouse the entire concealed asset, and forensic accountants can find what individuals can’t. Do not attempt to do an investigation yourself, and do not sign a settlement dividing assets when you don’t know if you have discovered all hidden assets.
What To Do If You Are Facing A High-Conflict Divorce
If your divorce has the features described in this article, or you can see them coming, there are a few important things to consider. First, you should move early and in the right order. If there are genuine grounds for protection, the DVRO comes before everything else, because the first orders set the structure of custody and much of the rest of the case. Second, treat the finances as a forensic investigation from the first day, because in these cases they almost always require one. Finally, you should retain an attorney who is genuinely prepared to try the case. Trial readiness is what produces both the courtroom victories and, just as often, the early reasonable settlement that avoids years of litigation.
This article provides general information about California law and is not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you are facing a high- conflict divorce or a restraining order matter, the time to understand your position is before the first orders are made.