Sole And Community Property In Petition Must Be Disposed Of In California Divorce Judgment

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Sole And Community Property In Petition Must Be Disposed Of In California Divorce Judgment

Hi, this is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

And today were talking about an item on the Los Angeles Superior Court judgment checklist.

This is their rejection checklist that they use when you submit your final divorce paperwork and it says, “We regret, we must return this judgment for the following reasons checked”.

So, I decided I’m going to do a series of videos and discuss all the different reasons in this two and three page judgment reject sheet, of what could happen and how to correct that or if you haven’t submitted it yet, prevent it from happening.

So, today we’re going to talk about, and this is on page two, we’re going to talk about, under where it says judicial council form FL-180 and then on page two it says, “All sole and community property listed in the petition must be disposed of in the judgment.”

Okay, so, when you filed your petition and I have one here, when you filed your petition at the bottom of page one. Number four, it says: separate property and on page two number five it says: community property.

Now, at that point you may have either listed certain property, maybe you listed some items at your separate property and listed some items as your community property or maybe you marked the box that says in property declaration, form FL-160 or you said in attachment four.

So, if you listed property below or if you listed property on that FL-160 or in an attachment. All that property in your final judgment must be disposed of.

So, let’s say that you listed ten items and it doesn’t matter if you listed them below here, in a separate declaration, in an attachment or in the property declaration. Regardless of where you listed at, if you listed ten items on property, on separate property, when it comes time to do the judgment paperwork, all those items need to be given or signed to either you or your spouse.

If the court, in going through the judgment find nine items that are listed and distributed or assigned to one of you but the tenth item isn’t, they’re going to reject the entire divorce. That’s because if you list property on your petition or in any attachment to that petition, that court needs to assign that to either you or your spouse.

You can imagine if you forgot to list a checking account that had $10,000 in it, you listed on the petition but you didn’t assign it to either party in the divorce judgment and the judge signs the case. Then you have this outstanding asset, this $10,000 checking account that hasn’t been confirmed to anyone.

Now, what are you going to do with that? You are going to have to go back to court. So, that’s why the judgment would be rejected, because it doesn’t address all of the issues of assets and debts being distributed that were listed in the petition.

So, to avoid that, just make sure that if you list something that when you do the final judgment paperwork that each of the items that were listed, either in the property declaration, if it was a default judgment or if you marked the property declaration box. You are going to want make sure that all property is listed on the judgment paperwork and is assigned to one party or the other.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce 661.com.

If you have any questions, please give me a call – 661-281-0266.

Thanks and have a great day!

Divorce Forms You Need To Complete After Hearing | California Divorce

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Divorce Forms You Need To Complete After Hearing | California Divorce

Hi! This is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

And today I’m going to tell you how and what you need to do after you’ve gone to a hearing for your divorce.

Now, this is going to be specifically about, say, a request for order, an order show cause and that type of hearing, maybe you filled a motion to get some temporary orders for spousal support, child support, something like that.

So, you’re going to go to your court date, you’re going to have a hearing, if both parties were there, the judge will make orders, even if both parties are not there the judge can still make orders but in that case you’re going to have to take some additional steps to be done in this case.

So if you go to court, I just had a client and this is based on a specific example I just had. I had a client, go to court, filed the motion, went to court, the judge made orders and her spouse did not appear.

So the judge made some orders and advised her that she needed to complete an order after hearing and give notice.

So, of course her question was what does that mean? So, I wanted to clarify that for those that maybe completely doing your divorce on your own without the assistance of, let’s say a firm such us ours and you wouldn’t know what to do.

So, this is for you folks. What you have to do is what’s called an order after hearing. There are some forms online you can find that are fill-able. You can fill out the order after hearing and basically documents what the judge said.

Now, one of the first things you’re going to need is the minute order. The minute order is what the clerk types up of what the judge said at that particular hearing on that particular date. So, you’re going to first need to obtain a copy of that and for more information on that, you can watch a video I did on that as well.

Once you have the minute order, you’re going to take the order that was indicated on that minute order and you’re going to write that on the order after hearing. You’re going to use the different attachments necessary depending on what was ordered. Was it attorney’s fees, was it child support, custody and visitation. Once you see this fill-able order after hearing, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

So, you’re going to fill out that main page and then you’re going to do whatever attachments for whatever orders were made and then you’re going to write a letter to your spouse and include a copy of that order, letting them know that this is the order after hearing that you have typed up, here’s the copy of the minute order and that you need them to sign the order after hearing so you can submit it to the court to be signed.

You see, when they have one party do the paperwork, the other party has to sign it, agreeing with it.

Now, the rules say that they have ten days to respond to that letter. So, you mail a letter with the order after hearing and let them know they have ten days. After ten days have passed, you can submit that to the court and let the court know that, not only do they not object or call you, they didn’t respond and say there is something wrong with it.

So, if you’re going to do that, another thing that you have to fill out now is what’s called a declaration regarding execution of order after hearing and what it is, it’s a, you have to do this on the court’s pleading paper and you have to let the court know that you had the hearing, that you showed up, that orders were made, that you complied with the rule, you mailed the letter out, there is no objection, they didn’t respond and you’re asking the court to sign the order after hearing, make it an official order of the court without the other party’s signature and it is called a declaration of execution of order after hearing.

We can help you do that and you’ve been to a hearing and the judge advised you, you needed to complete an order after hearing, give us a call, we can take care of that get it filed and served for you and get it down to your court for you.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. Please give me a call, 661-281-0266 and talk to you soon!

Signing Divorce Papers Does Not Mean You Agree | California Divorce

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Signing Divorce Papers Does Not Mean You Agree | California Divorce

Hi, this is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

And today I wanted to clear up some misunderstanding as it relates to when you are served divorce documents by mail.

So, we specialize in divorce in LA County and a lot of our cases are amicable. And in amicable divorce cases what we like to do as instead of having the original or initial documents served by a process server, we like to mail them out to your spouse.

So they can simply sign the form which is called the notice of acknowledgement of receipt. All they have to do is sign this form that says that they received the papers and mail it back to our office.

That will take the place of hiring a process server and saves us some time and money.

Now, what happens sometimes is when people receive the papers like the summons, the petition, and anything else that might be included in the initial documents, is they’ll read the documents and if there’s something that they don’t agree with, they’ll tell the other party that they’re not going to sign the papers.

And that doesn’t make any sense.

When you receive papers from say, our office, and we’ve sent them to you along with this notice of acknowledgement of receipt. All we’re asking is, that you sign this form which says that you received the documents.

It in no way means that you agree with anything inside the petition.

So in this current case, the spouse had an issue with the custody arrangement that his wife was asking for, and because of that, he let her know that he wasn’t going to sign this notice of acknowledgement of receipt because he didn’t agree.

That’s not the proper way to do that, all he needs to do is sign the notice of acknowledgement of receipt and mail it back to our office.

This simply lets the court know he was served, that he received their paper. It in no way means he agrees with anything in those papers, so what’s going to happen is instead of him just signing this form now we have to hire a process server to go out there and hand him the forms.

Now because a process server served him, does that mean that he agrees with what’s in the papers? Of course not. So it’s the same thing.

So, if you want to disagree with something that you’ve been served with, that’s when you file a response. That’s what the response is for.

So just wanted to make this quick video to let people know if you received papers from our office or from anyone else if you’re in a self-representative divorce case, and your spouse mails you this notice of acknowledgement of receipt along with the papers. Signing that only means you received the papers so you don’t have to hire a process server, hope that helps.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com we specialize in divorce in Los Angeles County. Please give me a call if you have any questions or need assistance with your divorce case 661-281-0266.

Thanks and have a great day!

Post Valentines Day Blues | Divorce In Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

It is that time of year again, where people wait to see what happens at Valentines day to decide on whether or not to file for divorce.  At least that is what the mainstream media wants us to believe.

Being involved with people going through divorce for the last 5 years, I can tell you that we see different reasons for the uptick in divorce flings after Valentines day and wanted to share those insights.

A lot of it has to do with timing and Valentines day just happens to fall within one of the busiest quarters of the year.

There is a stockpile of people who hold off from filing for divorce during the months leading up to the holidays from about Thanksgiving through Christmas.  Those folks that would have normally filed during those times, all come in around beginning in the new year in January.

So we have those that decided in January to file for divorce along all those who had planned on filing back in November and December.

Another reason we see a lot of divorce filings, at least an increase that is, is because people are getting their tax return money in.  We know this for sure because we have had several people call our office for divorce in Santa Clarita and advise us they will be filing for divorce as soon as they get their tax return back.

I would offer one word of caution if you are using Valentines day as your reason for filing for divorce.  Our advice is not to make an emotional decision based upon what happened at Valentines day.

If Valentines day alone is the reason you are filing for divorce, I would say hold off.  If it is a good decision, you can always file for divorce later.

If you are of the majority and Valentines day was not the reason you are filing for divorce and you had made this decision in the past, then it is probably the right thing to do.

There is one rule we follow in our office in Santa Clarita.  If a spouse is in our office, upset, crying and emotional, we will not allow them to file for divorce, at least with us, until they have calmed down and are thinking rationally.

Want to know the interesting thing?  We have never seen those people back in our office which tells us that it would have been a mistake for them to file for divorce when they came into our office.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in divorce.

How And When To Serve A Responsive Declaration | California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How And When To Serve A Responsive Declaration | California Divorce

Hi, Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

Today we’re talking about the due dates for filing your, or serving your responsive declaration to a motion.

I’ve recently helped a client file a response and we were talking about when he had to get into my office because there is a certain time-frame you have to file and serve your responsive paperwork.

In a previous video we talked about, if you’re the filing party, the moving party, how and when you need to serve the order to show cause documents on the other party.

But if you’re filing a response, you have other due dates that you need to be aware of.

So if you did recently receive a motion, they should have served you and given you ample time to respond. What the court say is it needs to be sixteen court days plus five calendar days if they’re going to mail it to you.

And we covered that in a previous video.

But if you were going to respond you also have some deadlines. The responsive declaration that you’re going to prepare has to be in court, file with the court and served on the other party, nine court days prior to the hearing.

Now, you don’t have to personally serve it, you can but that’s what that nine days is talking about. Nine court days prior to hearing you have to personally serve that responsive declaration on your spouse, if you’re going to mail it then you add five calendar days. So, it’ll be nine court days, watch out for holidays, plus five calendar days. That’s the time frames when you’re filing, and responding to an order to show cause, a motion, request for order, or whatever you want to call it.

Just keep track of those court days and what you’re going to do. Look at the court date, count back nine court days, then add 5 calendar days, and make sure you mail that out by that date, and make sure you get that filed with the court prior to that nine court day period.

This is Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. For more information, give me a call, 661-281-0266.

Look forward to talking to you.

Choose A Licensed Divorce Paralegal That Is Legitimate | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We keep hearing horror stories of people who used a divorce service that was not licensed, not legitimate or lost their money attempting to use one of the online divorce solutions.

i just read an article online about a paralegal who was charged with what is called “UPL” or Unauthorized Practice of Law. These are serious charges that can bring with them criminal penalties including jail and fines.

As a Divorce Paralegal Service in Santa Clarita, CA that provides California divorce services, this is something we have to be careful of on a daily basis.

There are lots of people out there who are not licensed nor bonded to prepare divorce paperwork, and you need to be careful with who you choose to help you with your divorce.

Because of the amount of fraud in this industry, those of us who are licensed and bonded, have to jump through many hoops to keep our license.  In addition, several regulations are put in place and specific rules have to be followed.

It is interesting actually, because those of us who are licensed and providing divorce services are the ones who have take all these extra steps. Those that are operating illegal paralegal services, of course, are not complying with the new regulations that were created for those not following the law.

The point being, is that when deciding on who to use to prepare your divorce in Santa Clarita, whether it be a full service divorce firm like ours or some online document assembly service, make sure that they are compliant with the law.

One of the biggest headaches for our company is talking to people who were previously burned by another divorce paralegal service.  We have to explain the fact that who they used were not legally supposed to be in business.

Here is how you can make sure you are working with a legitimate business.  First, they should be licensed and bonded.  As legal document preparers, we are issued photo identification that clearly indicates that we are allowed to provide services to the public.  In addition, we are required to hold a bond.

Ask to see these documents before you work with any company who is going to provide legal document preparation.

If you would like help with your divorce, we are a full service divorce document preparation firm that specializes in California divorce.

Filing & Service Due Dates For California Divorce Motions & Request For Orders

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Filing & Service Due Dates For California Divorce Motions & Request For Orders

Hi, Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com

Today, we’re talking about motions, order to show causes, and request for orders.

Essentially that name, is just a duplicate of word of the same thing. Motions, order to show cause, and request for order.

The reason I’m using all three of those is because they have changed the name from order to show cause to request for order recently. It’s the same application; they just changed it a little bit, so I wanted to make that clear.

But what we’re talking about today is due dates.

So when you file a motion in order to show cause or request for order, there are specific due dates you have to comply with in order to serve that and, we’re going to talk about that right now.

So let’s assume you’re filing a motion for temporary orders for child support, spouse support, it doesn’t matter.

You’re in the divorce case and you’re going to file a motion to get a court date for the court to do something, you’re going to ask the court to do something.

So what are the due dates?

So the first thing you’re going to do is file the motion. You’re going to go down to court, get a court date and then you’re going to have your filed documents from the court.

The next thing you need to do is serve that on the other party. You need to serve that on the other party to let them know, hey you need to show up for this hearing because I’m going to go to court and ask the judge to make some orders. So what are the due dates on this?

If you have just filed a motion, what you have to do is look at the court date. To file a motion, you have to serve that motion that you filed with the court, sixteen court days prior to the hearing, so what you need to do is you need to look at the court date, then look at the calendar and count back sixteen court days, not calendar days, court days.

And now remember, these are court days so you need to make sure you check the court website for any holidays, you don’t want to serve this late, the other party could object or do some other things if you don’t serve this at a timely fashion. So look at your court date, count back sixteen court days, and watch out for holidays.

Now that’s the day that that form or that motion rather has to be personally served, that means you have to have someone other than yourself personally deliver it, hand- deliver it to that person, if you want that to count.

Now, the other way you can do that is if it’s not post-judgment. Post-judgment motions have to be served personally but if you have a motion during a divorce case, you can simply mail it to them. So what you need to do is do the sixteen court days and add five calendar days to mail, and that would be a good mail service.

The next due date you need to concern yourself is if you’re filing a response.

The response due dates, that is something I’m going to cover the response due dates on another video. So make sure if you’re responding, check for another video, Google our channel for response dates for motions for divorce cases in California.

This is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com; you can get more information off our website at divorce661.com, or reach me direct at 661-281-0266.

Thanks for reading!

 

How To Move California Divorce Forward | Request Trial Setting Conference

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How To Move California Divorce Forward | Request Trial Setting

Hi Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

Today we’re talking about how to get your case moving, your divorce case moving in California.

So, a lot of folks will call me and let’s say they started their divorce on their own, they didn’t know I existed, they didn’t they could get expert divorce services in California and have someone take care of the paperwork for them, and they attempted to do this themselves.

Let’ say they got a certain way through the process but the other party isn’t cooperating, the other party isn’t filling out their documents, and in some cases you can simply move forward with a default.

But in cases where the other party filed a response, you cannot just file a default and push forward with your divorce. You’re going to have to get the court involved.

So what is it that we need to do to get the court involved to move your case forward, when the other party has entered the case by filing a response? So let me set this up, there are certain procedural steps to a divorce.

Number one, you filed your case and served your spouse; number two, let’s say your spouse filed a response and has now entered the case. The next step for both parties is to complete their financial disclosures. These are known as your preliminary declaration of disclosures.

Once you’ve done that, how do you compel the other party to get them to do theirs? Let’ say, they don’t do it, they’re not doing it, or they intentionally want to stall the case and that’s why they’re not moving forward with preparing their preliminary declaration of disclosure, what can you do?

Well, if you’re with a law firm, and if you’re watching this you’re probably not, what an attorney would do is start a series of letters.

We’re requesting you do your disclosures in thirty days, if not, we’re going to request, file a motion, to compel you to do this. Well that can be a lot of work. Another thing that you can do is simply get the court involved at this point.

And the way you would do that is by filing what’s called a request for trial setting  conference. And this is family law 014, the form number is FAM-014, and what you will do with this is you will file this with the court and you will let them know what the issues of the divorce are. Are they child custody? Spousal support? You want to let them know what they are. And then how long you think the trial is going to last.

So essentially what you’re going to do is you’re asking the court to step in and start setting some dates for things to get moving forward.

So here’s what you can expect to happen, you would file the form, you have to serve it on your spouse.

A couple of weeks later, or a month in some cases, you’ll get the form back from the court letting you know of a court date.

The first court date could be called a trial setting conference; it could be called a case management conference.

Essentially what it is, the courts are going to bring the parties into court and find out what’s going on and where is it at? Once you talk to the judge on that trial setting conference or case management conference, the judge is likely to make some specific orders to move the case forward. So they may say, hey what’s happening?

Well I filed this because the other party hasn’t filed their preliminary declaration of disclosure. The judge may say that well, you have thirty days to do this. And set another conference date down the road.  So what the court will then do now that you have them involved is start setting a series of dates to move this thing forward. That’s what you need to do if it’s not moving forward, if you need to get the court involved in order to complete your divorce when the other party has responded.

I hope this has been helpful on moving your case forward; this is regarding filing a request for trial set in conference for your divorce.

My name is Tim Blankenship, 661-281-0266. And get more information off our website at divorce661.com.

Thanks!

Can You Avoid Divorce By Watching Movies? | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Okay, so I was reading my news feed, that let’s me know about anything divorce related.  This one caught my eye. It said “Couples can avoid divorce by watching movies.?

Before i even read the article, I thought to myself, “Perfect, my wife and I love watching movies together”.

In fact we just had a marathon weekend this Valentines weekend where we watched the entire second season of House Of Cards, which is an amazing show by the way…

So as I was having that thought, I started to read the article. Then I started seeing words like “Clinical” and “Psychologist” and i suddenly realized that this was not about watching any old movie…

So what this story boiled down to is that showed that married couples who watch movies together and then talk about them, will strengthen the marriage.  But again, these are not just regular old movies.

What they did is pre select 50 films that couples could choose from to watch together.  The films had a common theme.  They were films where there were conflict resolution issues in relationships.  They were to watch 5 films of their choosing within 30 days

After the couples watched the films, they would discuss the film using questions provided to them.

So what was the result?

They said of their study that went from 1998 to 2004 showed that folks that participated had a 50% less likely chance of filing for divorce.

Hey, if watching movies can help improve relationships, I am all in. I am married and have been so for 18 years now, and would like to keep it that way.

It is not easy being married and it takes a lot of work to keep it together.  A lot of give and take goes on in our home and so far so good on the home front. Not that we don’t have our days, but I think that is just part of the deal.

If you are interested in learning more about the program or to participate you can go to couples-research.com.

If you happen to check it out, make sure to let me know in the comments section below.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in divorce.  Why do we talk about how to keep your marriage together?  Because we don’t want people to divorce, but when people need help with their divorce, we want them to have an affordable divorce solution available.

Santa Clarita Divorce Rates Rise As Economy Improves

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Santa Clarita Divorce Rates Rise As Economy Improves

In a recent article in Bloomberg, it was reported that there is a worsening U.S. divorce rate due to an improving economy.  Basically, people did not have enough money to divorce during the time the economy was not so good.

In the U.S. during the recession (that they claim ended in June 2009) they stated that there was a 40 year low in divorce cases which was down as much as a third.  Between 2009 and 2012 people getting a divorce in the U.S. rose three years in a row to 2.4 million.  So there is a direct correlation between income and people filing for divorce.

Essentially, what this article points to is that people will avoid getting a divorce for financial reasons.  And I can tell you, without a doubt, that many of my clients going through divorce in Santa Clarita don’t file for divorce specifically because of money concerns.

In fact, most of my clients who filed for divorce and are in the middle of their divorce continue to live together during the entire divorce process simply for financial reasons.

This is so much the case, that people, in some cases, even wait until their tax return is filed.  Every year, I get many clients who call me in December, telling me that they will be filing in February after they have filed their tax return.

I guess so many of us are living paycheck to paycheck!!

Of course, Santa Clarita home prices have a lot do with an improving economy and we have certainly seen an uptick in pricing in Santa Clarita over the last few years. Almost seems that they are back to their pre-recession highs.

In any event, we are definitley seeing more divorce cases being filed now as opposed to the recession period.  I know that a lot of people are using our Santa Clarita Divorce Service, due to the extreme value we provide.

We can do just about everything a divorce lawyer in Santa Clarita can do.  The only exclusions are that we don’t give legal advice and we don’t represent you in court.  The idea being that you are trying to work through your divorce on your own and attempt to come to an agreement.

You can find the original Bloomberg Article Here.