Marriage of Wu and Zhai CA6

I. BACKGROUND

Wu and Zhai were married for approximately 21 years. They married in October 1989 and separated in January 2011 but continued to cohabit. Wu petitioned for dissolution in 2011 and filed two amended petitions in 2012. He remarried in 2013 after obtaining a default judgment in November 2012. The 2012 default judgment terminated the court’s jurisdiction to award Wu spousal support but reserved all other issues of support and property division; it also provided for joint legal and joint physical custody of the parties’ two minor children, specifying no parenting schedule because the parties continued to live together. Zhai did not appear in the case until March 2019, when (with the assistance of her present appellate counsel) she filed a request for order alleging that Wu had kept her in the dark regarding the 2012 dissolution proceedings until late 2015, when he disclosed his remarriage, eventually moving out of the marital residence in early 2016. Zhai acknowledged, however, that on two separate occasions in 2012, strangers had hand- delivered papers to her, which she did not open or read. Zhai did not seek to set aside the judgment but requested sole legal and…