How We Are Disrupting The California Divorce Business

Posted by Tim Blankenship on


Have you heard the word “disruptive” used to describe some business’s or business models? Disruptive in this sense is defined as follows “A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network”.

Here is what comes to mind when I hear disruptive innovations.  I am sure you have heard some of these and I will give you a little comparison.

Uber’s entry into the transportation industry effecting Taxi services.

Amazon’s effect on shopping.

Pandora’s effect on how we consume music.

Airbnb’s effect on options for hotels.

You can see how the introduction of these business models effected the business’s that had operated the same way for so many years without ever making changes to their business model.

So why do I bring this up.  I believe that our business is a disruptive business to the legal profession by providing affordable legal services to people.

When I first started this business, I did not feel that this business model was disruptive to law firms and attorneys. I felt that our client base was much different than the client base for attorneys.

However, as the years have gone by, I do notice some overlap. This overlap is in the shape of people who would have otherwise used an attorney for their divorce, but because we existed, they turned to us for help.  Many of these people never needed an attorney to begin with, they just didn’t know there was any other options.  And until we came along, there really was not anyone else out there doing what we are doing.

I am not saying that we created this industry.  Not at all.  The concept of independent paralegal services has been around a long time.  It was not until 12 or so plus years ago they put a new name to it, “Legal Document Assistant” to differentiate between what we do and what a paralegal does which is to be supervised by an attorney.

Anyway, our business model is a disruptive model to the lawyer and law firm business model. Many of our clients would have otherwise used an attorney had they not found us.  But this would have only been due to lack of options.  Many did not need an attorney or legal advice, but there was no other choice than to pay the big bucks for an attorney.

Here is a perfect example of a recent conversation that was disruptive to lawyers.

I received a call from a guy who had questions about attending a Trial Setting Conference. He was living out of state so he was looking for someone to attend the hearing on his behalf because he did not want to fly in.  He had called around and spoke to some attorneys and they were quoting him between $2,500 and $5,000 for a retainer fee.  This is pretty typical.

The one attorney said the $2,500 would only pay for her appearance at the TSC and anything else would be billed at $250 per hour.

Here is what I told him.  I told him that the Trial Setting Conference is not all that important and usually lasts about 15 minutes, if that.  I then told him it is possible to get permission from the court to appear telephonically.  ==>Here is the article which discusses more on that process<==

So he followed my advice and got permission for the court call. His total cost? $86.00…

$86.00 vs. $2,500.  And that money didn’t even go to me.  That went to the Company that provides the Court Call service.

You might say I have a bad business model.  I spent 30 minutes on the phone with this guy, looked up his court case number, provided him the number to the court and to court call.

I don’t think so though. This guy will call me back as his case progresses.  How can’t he after the help that was provided.

And that is how I operate my business.  I look out for the best interest of my clients, whether clients or not and whether I will make any money or not.  I think it will give me good Karma.

And I think it is a bad practice for an attorney to not tell someone that a hearing is only going to last 15 minutes and knowing he is out of state does not have any options so tries to bilk $2,500 out of him.

This is why attorneys have the reputation they have.

Santa Clarita Divorce | Divorce Assistance Via Live Chat On Divorce661.Com

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

If you have been to our website you may have noticed a green tab on the right hand side about half way down that says “Live Support”  This is a chat feature we have installed to allow for people who are visiting our site an easy way to ask questions if they are either not ready to pick up the phone or possibly can’t because they are at work and can’t discuss things over the phone.

It is a pretty popular function that people take advantage of. I actually man the live chat when it is on and I am available to be at my computer to answer questions as they come in.

When people are going through divorce they have lots of questions. That is why we have so much information out there in a variety of formats like our blog, podcast and Youtube channel.  In an industry that does not like to share information or provide answers to questions for free, out clients and people who find us are happy that we are out there providing this information.

The chat feature is just another way we are trying to help people get through their divorce in California.  While I wish I had time to man it 24 hours a day, I try to at least have the chat feature available a few hours a day when I am not with clients and sitting at my desk writing motions, etc.

So feel free to jump on board and use the chat feature if you are not able to call in.

Santa Clarita Divorce | Divorce Podcast On Soundcloud

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

One of the things I spend most of my time on to grow my business is to focus on giving people what they want? What do people want? They want information.

The legal industry is interesting. Most people attorneys keep information to themselves and don’t want to explain how things work because they are afraid you will realize that you might not need them.

I have always taken an opposite approach and spend most of my time giving out information in a variety of different formats.

We have information on our blogs, Facebook, a Youtube Channel as well as our podcast. We have been focusing our attention on Soundcloud lately so people can listen to the information we are giving out instead of having to read it.

We have found that people are starting to get away from reading and are consuming content on video or audio. Anything but reading it seems, but we still have to write as this is the only way for the search engines to find us because other than Youtube, search engines cannot hear what is in the podcasts.

Let me know if this is true for you.  How do you get your content for information you are looking for?

Camping In Grays Valley Independence California (Part 1) | July 30,2015

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

I have been posting now for 3 days on things me and my family are doing and enjoying it a bit.  It is late on Wednesday about 10 p.m. ( i say late because i have been up since 4 a.m.) but wanted to get a jump on my daily post. Plus because I slept so awful from having things on my mind, I thought this might help with sleep.  (and the 1 or 2 shots of Jack Daniels )

I like writing these posts because I don’t have to be so official… Not that I am too much with my other articles, videos and podcasts, but  sometimes i just like to write.

I mean i will spell things correctly because there is a red line under them if i don’t, but as far as punctuation and (capitalizing the i) I am not going to take the time.  I say that because my wife and daughter are curious what i am writing about the family and correcting me on this.  So don’t expect it here.

So I changed my format a little bit and instead of just using the title of my name and divorce611 and the date, I put a little title that references what it may be about. I am sure this will change over the days and months but will try to keep the dates right.

My wife and I are not good planners.  I am not a good planner. I see my friends on Facebook over the summer posting their awesome summer vacation photos and understand that they probably made these plans several months or years ago and get jealous. Our plans are made about a week out, usually the day before we do anything which is usually camping in our motorhome.

Shockingly we made plans to go go camping about 3 weeks out.  AND got a camping spot at a supposed awesome place at Grays Meadow which it in the mountains outside of Independence, CA.

Now I am always concerned when I am able to get last minute reservations for a ‘hot spot with awesome reviews” but we are just going to go for it.

If you are not familiar with Grays Meadow in Independence, CA, it sits at an elevation of about 9,500 feet.  I read all the reviews and articles and the place looks amazing.  Most are what people refer to themselves as “minimalists” which means they are totally satisfied in a tent, cooking outside, maybe not even cooking, hiking and living on the land.  I am sure that people define “minimalist” different.

One thing is for sure.  The place looks awesome. We are staying in a campsite that has a river running right behind. From the photos it looks like we can fish from the site.  We’ll see with the drought and all here in California.

There are so many awesome photos of Grays Meadow that I will just post one here and them provide THIS LINK to google photos… You’re welcome!

I am going to be talking a lot about Grays Meadow because of the elevation. I said it is at 9,500 feet and the “minimalists” use this as a starting point to get acclimatized to Mount Whitney.  From what I understand, they will stay here a day or two to get ready for the big climb.

We are just here to camp and fish and hike for a few days and i am concerned about the elevation.  I have good reason to be.

When I was in the Marine Corps during Desert Storm in 1990 right after high school, I was first deployed to Okinawa, Japan at Camp Hanson.  Here, we assigned as the second amphibious task force to attack Iraq.  Okay, not the purpose of this post (and will discuss further later i am sure) we later deployed to Mount Fuji, Japan.

During our training we were able to train with the Japanese military, and later we deployed to Mount Fuji which sits a 12.388 feet elevation.  Camp Fuji is at the base of the mountain, but we did have the opportunity to climb Mt. Fuji at some point.

Man I can get off topic.

Anyhow, the purpose of bringing this up is that I do get AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) otherwise known as Altitude Sickness.  I did not know it at the time in my prime at 19 years old but I had a very negative effect at this altitude.  It was only through the last 20 years, and most recently in the last 2 years, that I don’t feel to good at high altitudes.

The interesting thing to learn is that is has nothing to do with age or how good of shape you are in. I was 19 ( or 18 can’t remember) and out of breath, had headaches and was disoriented at 12,000 feet. Okay, the bottle of Dom Perignon we bought in Tokyo, Japan a few weeks prior did not help with the whole altitude thing when we drank it is a celebration of our climb to the top of Mt. Fuji.

Okay, have gotten way off topic.  The point is I don’t do good at high altitude.  I have done some research on high altitude that i will discuss in other posts.

Good thing I made this part 1. We are about 2 weeks from our camping at Grays Meadow and already have talked about many things,

If i can remember, i want to talk about what you can do to eleviate high altitude or AMS symptoms that I found useful on the internet.  I will also discuss whether they actually worked as there is not a whole lot of discussion on the internet about it.

Even the Yelp reviews of Grays Meadow don’t say anything about the altitude or getting ready for that for us normal people, so want to make sure to discuss it.

Talk to you tomorrow.

 

 

 

Change Of Venue California Family Law Code Of Civil Procedure 397.5

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Change Of Venue California Family Law Code Of Civil Procedure 397.5

I am helping a client with their California family law case with a change of venue in Los Angeles Superior Court. Specifically we are talking about a change of venue based upon Family Law Code of Civil Procedure 397.5

Family Law Code of Civil Procedure 397.5 is a pretty specific code section that says;
In any proceeding for dissolution or nullity of marriage or legal separation of the parties under the Family Code, where it appears that both petitioner and respondent have moved from the county rendering the order, the court may, when the ends of justice and the convenience of the parties would be promoted by the change, order that the proceedings be transferred to the county of residence of either party.

This code does not leave much to argue against. It simply says that if both parties have moved from the County that they can make the request under 397.5.

However if you look at the words they chose to use, there is some conditions. First, the language used is “May”.  The Court “May” transfer the if both the petitioner and respondent have moved from the county.

Second, the language says “when the ends of justice and the convenience of the parties would be promoted by the change”.

So here is how I would write the requests for change of venue under 397.5. I would make sure not to take advantage of this section and think it is a done deal just by saying you both live outside the county.  I think you should include things that tell the court how it will be a convenience to the parties involved and to point out how the ends of justice would be met.

For those who are opposing the change of venue under 397.5, i would make sure to point out the opposite, of course, and explain why it is not in the best interest of the parties for the venue to be changed.

Some of these reasons could be that the person changing venue is only a few miles outside of the county and not much closer to the court they are asking it to me changed to.  Another reason would be to say (if it is true) that the only reason the other party is requesting the change is because they don’t like the judge and have been receiving unfavorable results at request for orders.

Again, I am writing an opposition request for order responsive declaration for a hearing coming up in a few weeks. I will write another post which details what the court’s ultimate decision was on this issue.

Tim Blankenship @ Divorce661.Com | July 29, 2015

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Every once and a while I am not able to sleep. I will go to bed just fine and then wake up super early, not on purpose, sometime around 3 or 3:30.  Today it was 3:45 a.m. when I woke up and despite my best intensions, cannot fall back to sleep.

What happens is that I wake up and my mind instantly starts thinking about the day and I can’t stop thinking.  I will usually lay there for about 30 minutes and then just get up.  So here I am at about 4 a.m. writing this post.  At least I will be can get some marketing done early which is good because I have a busy day.

Today I not only have to run a business but also handle all the kids from morning to night.  My wife works a lot of hours and this week she is traveling far to job sites and is out by 5 and gets home late around 8 p.m.

So after this post I will be making breakfast, and lunch for all of us.  My son is going to summer and school and tutoring and I have to drop him off and pick him up 3 different times throughout the day.  He is redoing a few classes so he can have a 3.0 GPA so he can get into a specific college that the FBI recruits from.

I am glad he has chosen the FBI over a street level cop like I was with LAPD for 13 years.  I have one kid in college and the other is college bound. So glad they have their act together. Much more than I did at their age.  Probably why I ended up in the Marine Corps after high school.  Nothing else better to do. More on that I am sure.

Well, off to start my day.  It is now 4:25 and I have one cup of coffee in me.

Oh, by the way, totally remembering my mom’s birthday today.

Santa Clarita Divorce | Calculating Child Support With Multiple Children Schedules

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When you are going through a divorce in California, you are going to have to come up with some child support numbers if you have children.  The basic premise is that you use the court’s dissomaster software ( you won’t have access, but you will as our client) and punch in the income of the parties and the time share percentages.

It looks like this.

Dissomaster Example
Dissomaster Example

Generally it is pretty easy to figure out. You decide who has the kids what percentage of time and punch in the incomes of the parties and the the software spits out a number. The timeshare percentages are also usually pretty easy to figure out. It usually goes something like this;

There are 3 children and they are all with mom 80 percent of the time. Pretty strait forward.

But how about this scenario;

There are 3 kids and 2 of the kids spend 90% of the time with mom and 1 of the kids spends 20% of the time with mom.

So what is the average time share between the 3 kids?

This is the formula we used to make this determination.

3 kids

Mom
2 kids 90% of time = 180%
1 kid 20% = 20%

200% divided by 3 = 66.66 %

33.33 percent assigned to father as average time share percentage

What we did essentially is take the 2 kids with 90% and multiply that by 2 because there are 2 kids. Then the one kid, (1 x 20% = 20%) The total being 200% and then divided by the number of children to come up with the average time share.

I know this is not calculus, but i figured if one of our clients had a question on it then somebody else out there might as well.

Tim Blankenship @ Divorce661.Com | July 28, 2014

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Today is Tuesday July 28, 2015 and i was reading the post I wrote for Monday and realized I had left out the single most important, yet devastating, thing that happened over the weekend.

I guess I did a good job blocking it from my mind as it was something that was very upsetting.

Our beloved labrador who we had for just over 10 years had to be put down.  He got cancer which resulted in tumors in and on his body.  It started about 8 months ago where we noticed little bumps on his skin which later, and quickly, turned into large tumors on his skin.

We opted for surgery as we thought the tumors could be removed, but about three months after the surgery the tumors began popping up all over his body, despite being on 24/7 steroids which were supposed to shrink the tumors.

We took him to Happy Pets in Valencia where we have been going for a while last Sunday and Dr. Johnson said it didn’t look good and if it were her dog she would opt to euthanize. We decided that we would give it a week so we could have a few more days with him, and later that week on Friday at 5:20 we took him to put him down.

You love pets, but this part is so hard.  This is the second lab we put down in 2 years.  The other one got cancer also, but he was much younger, just 7 years old.  The hardest part was the kids, who have known the Scout since they were 4 and 7, so basically their entire lives.

Scout RIP 7-24-15
Scout RIP 7-24-15

When our last lab died, Saber, we were convinced by our daughter, Aundrea, that we needed another dog. So we have an almost 3 year old lab named Hudson.

Here is a picture of our Scout (along with our Hudson as a baby who terrorized Scout)

So, like i said, for me to write an article on a Monday after a traumatic event over the weekend, i must have really blocked it out on Monday.

I have to say that on day 2 of writing these more personal posts, i am really enjoying it as a sort of recap to the day or even to log in and write a few sentences during the day as my crazy busy days permit.

I think another way of coping for me was to decide to take our 3 year old lab out for a run every day.  This was day two of our runs and because I have not ran in a while, my legs are really sore. Definitely limping around the office today when going to get coffee in the kitchen.

Today has been a super busy day and have started 2 new divorce cases, working on a new Request For Order and answering all the phone calls that come it from new potential clients.  I tell ya, the summer months slow down a bit due to the kids being out of school, but now that they are starting to go back we are already picking up the pace.

Until tomorrow.  Tim

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