California Divorce Court Acquired Jurisdiction Of The Respondent
Today, we are talking about the judgment form. This is the FL-180 and specifically we’re talking about in area where people are having trouble in determining what date is placed in this specific field.
This is at number three. It basically says, the court acquired jurisdiction of the respondent on what date. So the court wants to know when did the jurisdiction in this case started.
People don’t understand in a lot times what the court is asking for, what is the court’s—what is this jurisdiction date they’re asking for?
Well it’s actually quite simple. What they want to know is what is the day that your spouse was served? Or if you were served what is the day that you were served the documents, the summons and petitions in your divorce?
That’s the date the court requires jurisdiction and that’s what starts the clock on the sixth month process, on the 3o day process if you’re filling a default style divorce but that’s the date you’re going to want to use.
So what date are we talking about specifically? When you file your divorce case you have to then in the next step you need to serve your spouse. Not you specifically, it has to be someone other than you over the age of 18, could be a family member, a friend, a process server, a sheriff, anything like that.
So that date that they are served if it’s by personal service is the day the court requires jurisdiction. And that’s the date you’re going to place on the form. And again, that’s also the date that starts the six months process.
But what if you don’t do personal service? What if you don’t specifically hand the document to the other party and so you don’t know specific dates.
What we’re talking about specifically is what’s called the notice and acknowledgement of receipts. A lot of our divorce cases we won’t personally serve them. We will just mail serve them the divorce documents that been filed.
And we used what’s called the notice of acknowledgement and receipt. If you mail those documents to the other party, again, it has to be someone else that has to mail them. They mailed the documents to the other party and they basically asked them to sign acknowledging receipt.
And so for this date of jurisdiction the day they signed that notice of acknowledgement of receipt will be the date of service. Not the day you mailed it, the day they signed it because they’re required to sign it acknowledging receipts and then mail it back to you.
When you get it back take a look at the date they signed it that will be the date of jurisdiction. The other thing I want to talk about is if you are serving your spouse and your spouse lives out of state.
If they lived out of state you can use the notice of acknowledgement of receipt. But you can also use the service by certified mail. This is where you will certify mail the documents to your spouse.
You need to do it with return receipt and they will sign having received the certified mail. Sometimes the post office will sign having those received it. But the day they received it and you get that card back, as soon as you turned it over, it’s going to say the date they were served.
You can use that date as a date of service. That can be your date of jurisdiction for your divorce. So personal service would be day they were served.
If you do it mail service it’s going to be the day they signed it. And if it’s by certified mail it’s going to be the day they received it.
So I hope that makes sense because when you submit your judgment, if you have the date wrong on this line item your divorce will be rejected. Your judgment will be rejected simply for having the wrong date in there.
Do you have any questions on that, feel free to give me a call 661-281-0266. We are a full service divorce firm.
And if you need assistance with your divorce, we’d be happy to take your case over. Or if you haven’t started I’ll be happy to get your divorce. I’ll start it and wrap it up for you.
Please give us a call. Looking forward to working with you. And thanks for watching.
