Marriage of Hinton CA2/5

Opinion

Filed 9/10/26 Marriage of Hinton CA2/5 NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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 FIVE

In re the Marriage of JOHN and B348329 KIMBERLY HINTON. (Los Angeles County JOHN HINTON, Super. Ct. No. 20STFL07080) Appellant, v.

KIMBERLY HINTON,

Respondent.

APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles, William E. Weinberger, Judge. Affirmed. Law Offices of William W. Oxley, William Oxley; Jeff Lewis Law, Jeffrey Lewis, Kyla Dayton, Tim Cotter, for Appellant. Law Offices of Melissa B. Buchman, Melissa B. Buchman for Respondent. I. INTRODUCTION John Hinton appeals from an order denying a domestic violence restraining order he had requested against his former wife, Kimberly Hinton1. We affirm.

II. BACKGROUND

A. Procedural Background John and Kimberly were married with two minor children when John filed a petition for dissolution on July 27, 2020. In May 2021, John and Kimberly each filed a request for a domestic violence restraining order against the other under the Domestic Violence Prevention Act2 (the Act). In January 2022, the parties withdrew their requests after they executed a dissolution agreement and a conduct agreement. On May 8, 2023, Kimberly filed another request for a restraining order against John, seeking protection for herself and the parties’ two minor children. Kimberly then filed an amended request on May 10, 2023. On July 17, 2023, John filed his request for a restraining order against Kimberly.3 1 Because the parties share the same last name, we will refer to them by their first names for ease of reference.

2 Family Code section 6200, et seq. Further statutory references are to the Family Code.

3 Initially, the trial court granted John a temporary restraining order but vacated it the following day when Kimberly 2 On July 19, 2023, trial commenced on the parties’ respective requests and continued for 19 months, over a dozen hearing dates.4 The parties requested a written statement of decision.

B. Proposed Statement of Decision On February 10, 2025, the trial court issued a written tentative decision and proposed statement of decision denying John’s request for an order restraining Kimberly and granting Kimberly a five-year restraining order against John. The court also considered but declined to issue mutual restraining orders under section 6305 based on its express finding that John was the primary aggressor. (§ 6305, subd. (a).) In the section of the statement of decision titled “The Law Governing the Court’s Decision,” the trial court recognized that “[a]buse is not limited to the actual infliction of physical injury or assault.” It then explained that section 6320, subdivision (a) authorizes a protective order to enjoin a party from stalking, threatening, harassing, and disturbing the peace of a party, and further recognized that under subdivision (c), disturbing the peace encompasses a variety of behavior that “‘destroys the mental or emotional calm’” of the other party, including “‘coercive control’” such as “‘monitoring the other party’s … communications … .’”

objected that the request had specified the wrong party to be restrained. After John filed a corrected request on July 21, 2023, the court declined to grant him a temporary restraining order.

4 Because John does not challenge any of the trial court’s factual findings, we do not summarize the trial evidence.

3 The trial court first addressed Kimberly’s claims against John. It listed numerous instances of abuse it found John committed against Kimberly, both before they entered into the conduct agreement and afterward.5 The court’s recitation of abuse included derogatory comments made in text messages that included the children, “derogatory, demeaning, snide, and disrespectful comments about [Kimberly]” on a parental communications application, and at least one text that provided evidence that John was “stalking” Kimberly after he executed the conduct agreement. The court also found John violated the temporary restraining order issued in May 2023 by sending Kimberly text messages that did not involve custodial exchanges. The court concluded that “[Kimberly] sustained her burden to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that [John] engaged in acts of abuse against her, in particular, disturbing her peace, as provided in the [Act].” The trial court next addressed John’s claims against Kimberly. The court rejected John’s argument that Kimberly was “the most significant aggressor” and denied his request for a restraining order against her. “[T]he [c]ourt found that [John] was less than credible in his testimony seeking to refute [Kimberly]’s claims, and that lack of credibility impacted his credibility in general.” The court explained its decision as follows: “In regard to his claims that [Kimberly] continuously showed up at his house when court orders required her to drop 5 The conduct agreement provided that if one party violated the agreement, the other party could move for a domestic violence restraining order under the Act and revive claims of abuse that would ordinarily be time-barred.

4 the boys off down the street, at [the intersection of] Dilling and Beck, [Kimberly] presented credible testimony that on some of those occasions, she was at the Dilling and Beck location and on others, she was dropping materials, clothes or athletic equipment off for one or both of the boys at their request and, on at least one occasion, with [John]’s knowledge and consent. [Citation.] The evidence of another claim by [John] of abuse by [Kimberly], that, on January 1, 2023, she approached him at a restaurant in Catalina, where parents of the lacrosse team players were gathering after a game, in violation of the parties[’] [c]ode of [c]onduct [citation], was not convincing. [Kimberly] presented credible evidence that their son had suffered a concussion at the game, she had taken him to urgent care, and she was providing [John] an update and the discharge papers. In another incident involving an encounter between [John] and [Kimberly] at a lacrosse game in which one of their sons was playing, the evidence presented did not support a finding that [Kimberly] was an aggressor or engaged in an act of abuse. [Kimberly] acknowledged some communications toward [John] and at least one woman that he was seeing that was less than appropriate, but the [c]ourt does not find that those comments amounted to abuse or that this evidence would support a finding that [Kimberly] was the most significant aggressor.” The trial court considered whether section 6305 allowed it to issue a mutual restraining order and concluded it did not because, it found, John was the primary aggressor. The court issued a domestic violence restraining order protecting Kimberly against John for a period of five years.

5 C. John’s Objections to the Proposed Statement of Decision On February 20, 2025, John filed objections to the trial court’s proposed statement of decision (Rules of Court, rule 3.1590(g)), arguing that it “[did] not address significant, undisputed evidence of domestic violence, harassment, disturbing the peace, and coercion perpetrated by [Kimberly]” and thus “raise[d] concerns” that the court had not “fully considered the evidence presented” at trial and properly applied the law. The evidence John highlighted included behavior that occurred prior to the conduct agreement, allegations he had made and dismissed in his 2021 petition for a domestic violence restraining order. Specifically, Kimberly sent a sexually explicit photo to John in November 2020 stating, “Show [your girlfriend] this.” John replied, “That is awesome.” John also listed the allegation that, in May 2020, two months before he filed for dissolution, Kimberly sent a picture of “a sex toy” to one of John’s female co-workers.6 John complained that the trial court failed to mention this behavior in its statement of decision. John argued that Kimberly had admitted that in August 2020, a month after John filed for dissolution, she spent about ten minutes viewing a history of text messages between John and his girlfriend that popped up on the “family iPad” that John gave Kimberly to use while assisting the children with their schoolwork. John described this as “[u]ncontroverted” evidence.

6 Kimberly testified that the co-worker was a mutual friend and explained that they “would send each other silly little [GIF]s, and things like that, through messages or through Facebook.”

6 John requested the trial court amend its decision to “make explicit findings” regarding each of these allegations of abuse (seemingly all from 2020 except for alleged trespassing at his home), and “clarify why it did not restrain [Kimberly] on the evidence presented.” On February 25, 2025, Kimberly filed a request to strike John’s objections, arguing they were a procedurally improper attempt to obtain reconsideration, and that many of the issues raised were not set forth in his original request for a restraining order.

D. Ruling On June 16, 2025, the trial court issued a minute order overruling John’s objections and making its proposed statement of decision final. John filed a timely notice of appeal.

III. DISCUSSION

John asserts that the trial court applied the wrong legal standard to his petition for a domestic violence restraining order when it “employed an overly narrow view of what conduct constitutes abuse.” He also argues that the court erroneously omitted undisputed evidence of Kimberly’s abuse from its statement of decision and failed to properly consider a mutual restraining order. We disagree.

7 A. Legal Principles 1. The Domestic Violence Prevention Act “Under the [Act], a court is authorized to issue a protective order ‘“‘to restrain any person for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of domestic violence and ensuring a period of separation of the persons involved’ upon ‘reasonable proof of a past act or acts of abuse.’”’” (Curcio v. Pels (2020) 47 Cal.App.5th 1, 11 (Curcio).) “Abuse is not limited to the actual infliction of physical injury or assault.” (§ 6203, subd. (b).) The Act defines “abuse” to include “to engage in any behavior that has been or could be enjoined pursuant to Section 6320.” (Id., subd. (a)(4).) Such behavior includes “disturbing the peace of the other party.” (§ 6320, subd. (a).) As used in the Act, “‘disturbing the peace of the other party’ refers to conduct that, based on the totality of the circumstances, destroys the mental or emotional calm of the other party.” (Id., subd. (c).) “Courts of Appeal have found conduct involving communications such as text messages, e-mail, and social media constitutes abuse under the [Act] for disturbing the petitioner’s peace.” (Curcio, supra, 47 Cal.App.5th at p. 12.) The Act requires a showing of past abuse by a preponderance of the evidence. (In re Marriage of Davila & Mejia (2018) 29 Cal.App.5th 220, 226; see also Cooper v. Bettinger (2015) 242 Cal.App.4th 77, 90, fn. 14.) “The court shall consider the totality of the circumstances in determining whether to grant or deny a petition for relief.” (§ 6301, subd. (d).)

8 2. Standard of Review We review the denial of a protective order for abuse of discretion. (In re Marriage of Fregoso & Hernandez (2016) 5 Cal.App.5th 698, 702.) “‘If the court’s decision is influenced by an erroneous understanding of applicable law or reflects an unawareness of the full scope of its discretion, the court has not properly exercised its discretion under the law. [Citation.]’” (Rodriguez v. Menjivar (2015) 243 Cal.App.4th 816, 820–821, quoting Farmers Ins. Exchange v. Superior Court (2013) 218 Cal.App.4th 96, 106.) Whether a trial court applied the correct legal standard to an issue in exercising its discretion is a question of law, requiring de novo review. (R.R. v. C.R. (2026) 117 Cal.App.5th 1262, 1272.)

B. Analysis John contends that the trial court failed to apply the proper legal standard by failing to recognize as domestic abuse any conduct that was not physical violence. We reject this argument as it is squarely refuted by the court’s written statement of decision. In its statement of decision, the trial court recited the governing law, which recognizes disturbing the peace through communications as a form of domestic abuse. Further, the court demonstrated it understood how to apply this principle when it found that John abused Kimberly based on his “ongoing derogatory, demeaning and harassing communications” that disturbed her peace. Contrary to John’s argument, the trial court did not rely solely on John’s past acts of physical abuse when it decided to 9 grant Kimberly’s request to restrain him. The court described three instances of John’s physical abuse in just one of the eight paragraphs it used to describe numerous instances of primarily mental abuse that John perpetrated against Kimberly prior to the parties entering into the conduct agreement. But the court also described multiple instances of non-physical abuse that John perpetrated after the parties executed the conduct agreement under a separate subheading “[Kimberly’s] Claims of More Recent Verbal, Emotional and Mental Abuse.” Because the court demonstrated that it did not have an overly restrictive view of abuse when it granted Kimberly a restraining order based on a “series of texts and other communications that the [c]ourt [found] constituted abuse,” we reject John’s argument that the court failed to apply the proper legal standard when adjudicating the parties’ requests for domestic violence restraining orders. John next contends the trial court committed reversible error when it “failed to address or make findings on” “overwhelming and undisputed evidence of Kimberly’s abusive conduct … .” According to John, “by omitting discussion of the issues central to [his] petition from the statement of decision, the … court prevented [him] from obtaining effective appellate review.” John’s contention is meritless. “The trial court is not required to respond point by point to the issues posed in a request for statement of decision. The court’s statement of decision is sufficient if it fairly discloses the court’s determination as to the ultimate facts and material issues in the case.” (Golden Eagle Ins. Co. v. Foremost Ins. Co. (1993) 20 Cal.App.4th 1372, 1379–1380; accord, In re Marriage of Ciprari (2019) 32 Cal.App.5th 83, 94; Nunes Turfgrass v. Vaughan-Jacklin Seed 10 Co. (1988) 200 Cal.App.3d 1518, 1525 [“In issuing a statement of decision, the trial court need not address each question listed in a party’s request”].) An ultimate fact is a core fact, such as an essential element of a claim, and is distinguishable from an evidentiary fact and a legal conclusion. (Central Valley General Hospital v. Smith (2008) 162 Cal.App.4th 501, 513.) Here, the ultimate fact was whether Kimberly committed acts of abuse that would support issuance of a restraining order against her; and the trial court concluded that she did not. That is sufficient. Finally, section 6305 prohibits a court from issuing mutual restraining orders if it determines there is a dominant aggressor. (Id., subd. (a); Salmon v. Salmon (2022) 85 Cal.App.5th 1047, 1059 [“the plain words of the statute clearly contemplate the trial court will: weigh the acts of the parties; determine whether one of the parties should be considered the primary or dominant aggressor; and issue a mutual restraining order only in the event neither party can fairly be characterized as the primary aggressor”].) Because the trial court found that John was the dominant aggressor, we conclude it did not abuse its discretion when it declined to issue a mutual restraining order.

11 IV. DISPOSITION The judgment is affirmed. Costs are awarded to Kimberly.

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

KIM (D.), J.

We concur:

HOFFSTADT, P. J.

MOOR, J.