Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

For the benefit of others who may read your question and/or this answer, "ATROS" is an acronym for the automatic temporary restraining orders that apply to both participants in any dissolution of marriage.

In your case, I agree that not everyone involved here has conducted himself or herself with full obedience to the law. However, my question to you would be, after all is said and done, how badly are you harmed? You may be suffering a financial loss, or a big inconvenience, or maybe very little harm for which a court could compensate you. The debt presumably needed to be paid, and would have to be declared in your loan application whether it was secured by this real property or not, correct?

I don't do family law, but I do know that there is a relatively short time frame for property settlements to become final and unappealable, even if there is an irregularity such as fraud or past violation of a restraining order. If you are within the period and feel you have a loss or an unfair distribution, go back to your family-law attorney and arrange a further action within the dissolution proceeding framework to address the loss.

If the dissolution case is final, you probably still have a remedy in a civil action to have the lien removed and/or title quieted, based on the unlawful nature of the lien and the fact that the beneficiary of the lien was not a bona fide encumbrancer without notice of the marriage.

What's missing from Mr. Whipple's analysis is that he is forgetting that YOU signed the deed of trust FIRST. Recording is not what encumbers a piece of property with a deed of trust, it is signing and delivering the deed of trust. In fact, once you did that, if your ex had not signed it, the broker would have had the right to sue you to encumber your half of that or another piece of property in an action for specific performance of your agreement. So you were just as much in violation of the automatic restraining orders as she was - more so really. Furthermore the parties to a divorce case can always waive the ATROS simply by not seeking a contempt citation. So unless I am very mistaken, what is going on here is you are whining because you had agreed to give the broker a secured loan, knowing it was illegal to do so, and thinking that you wouldn't have to actually secure the loan because of that, but he found a way to go behind your back and get your ex to sign off. You thought you could avoid the security you agreed to give, by playing the ATROS against your lender, and you're complaining that she accomodated the transaction YOU agreed to. Really? You think any court will relieve you of your obligation or penalize her for that? Really? In the immortal words of Willis Alan Ramesy, as sung by Jimmy Buffet: "Ol' Spider got tangled in the black web that he spun." (Balad of Spider John, 1974).