April 6, 2026
Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Four
The Rule of In re Marriage of Jenkins is that a default judgment in a family law case must be set aside when it exceeds the relief requested in the petition and the defaulting party lacked adequate notice of the specific assets to be divided, under circumstances where the petition contained only "TBD" placeholders for property division and the prove-up hearing was conducted based on informal, off-the-record communications without proper notice to the defaulting spouse.