Legal Question in Family Law in California

No, not really, but there are other options. Only biological or adoptive parents are liable for child support. So you cannot make a wife pay for a child of another mother, or even count her income in his support obligation (though it is inculded in tax calculations to determine available income for support). He cannot, however, live off his wife to make his income so low that he pays little or no support. Assuming you have legally established that he is the father by a declaration of paternity or a parentage action, the single mother can get the court to order him to find work to pay proper support. If he fails to comply with a find work order by actually finding work, or meeting the court's requirements for looking for work, he will be ordered to pay support based on what he could/should be earning, which presumably would wind up having to be paid out of the wife's income. Otherwise he will go into arrears and wind up with 10% interest collecting on top of the amount owed.