6DCA Oral Argument - 2026/02/17 Afternoon Session - Feb 17, 2026

argument

6DCA Oral Argument - 2026/02/17 Afternoon Session

California Sixth District Court of Appeal 1h 22m 8 chapters transcribed 8 days ago official recording ↗

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What procedural steps does the court follow at the start of the afternoon session?

Justice Bromberg 2:18

Good afternoon, please be seated Welcome to our afternoon calendar where we have two matters on We will not have any panel changes, but I will go ahead and invite appearances and time estimates case by case So we will go ahead and take up our first matter before we do that. I'll just mention that we do have Council for the respondent in our first matter appearing remotely. And so we do have devices here on the bench where we can see him. And then at council table also, that is the case. And otherwise, for those of you in the audience, you'll be able to have the audio if you would like visual that's out in the antechamber. We also have technology here on the bench, and so we do have the briefs, records, and our notes here on laptops.

Justice Bromberg 3:15

And so if you see us looking away, that's the reason for that. So with that, we'll go ahead and take up our first matter, Chevalier versus Garcia-Rodriguez. And I can see that Ms. Chevalier is present in court representing herself. And we also have counsel for respondent appearing remotely. So let me go ahead and invite respondents' counsel to state your appearance, confirm your time estimate, and then we'll just move forward and hear from Ms. Chevalier.

Ray Bilyea 3:48

Good afternoon, Your Honors. My name is Ray Bilyea, representing Respondent Anastasia Graciela Rodriguez, who is also Respondent below. And my time estimate is 15 minutes.

Justice Bromberg 4:01

All right, very good. Thank you. And Ms. Chevalier, if you would stand at the podium, that way our live stream and recording will pick up what you have to say.

Astrid Chevalier 4:11

Good afternoon, Your Honor. My name is Astrid Chevalier, and I'm representing myself. I will need about 10 minutes, maybe a little bit more, and then the rest of the 15 minutes for rebuttal. Very good.

Justice Johanna Grover 4:22

Ms. Chevalier, I'm a little hard of hearing, so if you could speak up a little bit louder. I

Justice Bromberg 4:26

will try. All right, whenever you're ready, you may go ahead.

Astrid Chevalier 4:31

All right. May it please the court. This court should reverse for three reasons. Number one, the tri-court used the wrong standard. Number two, the trial court answered the wrong question. And number three, the trial court failed to correct its errors. Errors were prejudicial and irreversible. The facts are that Astrid and Anastasio declared themselves domestic partners in 2012. They have lived as such throughout their entire relationship. After Anastasio left in 2023, Astrid discovered the domestic partnership was not legally valid because it had not been registered with the state of California. And so the case is about whether Astrid had a subjective good faith belief that she was in a legally valid domestic partnership, which would make her a putative domestic partner under California Family Code Section 2251.

Astrid Chevalier 5:28

And so number one, the trial court applied an objective standard instead of the required subjective standard under CJA. CJA from 2013 was a wrongful death case whose summary judgment was reversed by this Court of Appeal in 2011, and that reversal was later affirmed by the Supreme Court of California in 2013. CJ rejected the objective approach of Rionis from 1988 and concluded that the good faith inquiry is purely subjective and evaluates the state of mind of the alleged purative spouse. It also said that the good faith inquiry does not call for application of a reasonable person test and a belief in the validity of the marriage need not be objectively reasonable.

Justice Lee 6:19

So. In the Sija or the Seha case, my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong about this, was that if the facts had been as Ms. Seha believed them to be, meaning that Mr. Seha had in fact been divorced at the time that they married, then she and Mr. Seha would have had a legally valid marriage. Yes? That's correct. So her... good faith subjective error was a purely factual error.

Astrid Chevalier 6:56

Yes? Yes and no. Because there's been... She signed documents that showed that her... then became, who became the future husband, had been previously married to Christina, and the divorce had not been finalized.

Justice Lee 7:16

Right, so she made a factual mistake about whether the previous marriage had been dissolved in time.