Will I Have To Go To Court For My California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Will I Have To Go To Court For My California Divorce

Hi! My name is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist. We are licensed and bonded legal document assistant firm specializing in divorce.

Today, I want to talk to you about how to avoid court when going through the divorce process in California. Many of the calls we get from our clients ask us “Tim, why have to go to court?”, and that all depends on a couple of things and there are some things we could do to help prevent you having to go to court.

Many times, when you go through an uncontested divorce case, the courts or the self-help centers, will want you to deal what’s called a ‘default judgment’.

A default judgment is where only one spouse participates in the divorce, the other spouse does not respond nor do they enter into an agreement.

We’re finding in many cases on these default judgments because the other party has not been involved whatsoever, the judge will often times ask the one party that’s initiated the divorce to come into court to explain the distribution of assets and debts.

Now, I will talk to you about another way of going through the divorce process that accomplishes exactly the same thing with a much less likelihood of having to go to court.

This is called the hybrid judgment. The hybrid judgment is very similar in that the other party will not file a response. However, the other party will enter into a written agreement.

Now when the court sees this judgment, they realize, while the other spouse did not respond, they’re still participating and have entered into an agreement and that agreement has been authorized. When that’s the case, even if the assets and debts have not been distributed evenly, that agreement has been authorized.

When that’s the case, even if the assets and debts have not been distributed evenly, they understand that there has been an agreement and that the parties have the best interest in mind of each other, they will not generally ask you to come to court when you have entered into an agreement in the judgment.

If you have further questions about the hybrid judgment or how to avoid going to court during divorce, please give us a call at 661-281-0266.

How To Look Up Your California Divorce Case Summary

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Hi. My name is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist. We’re licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm, specializing in divorce.

Today I want to talk to you about your California divorce case summary. There are many instances where you want to refer to your case summary to look up what documents have been filed in regards to your divorce.

If you’re representing yourself or if you’re working with a legal document preparation firm, it’s important to check your case summary.  Anything that you file with the court, you’re going to want to ensure that that has been appropriately filed with the court, and the only way you’re able to do this is by looking at the case summary online.

We have a legal resource page with a direct link to the Los Angeles County Family Law Case summary page. All you do is click on that link for the legal resource page, go to the page summary look up and then you enter your case number.

You can use the case summary to look at what documents have been filed and this will be particularly important at the time of judgment. When you go to file your judgment, there are certain documents that need to be filed before the court will approve the judgment. They will generally look at the case summary to verify that certain documents have been filed with the court appropriately.

That said, when you submit your judgment, it’s always a good idea to print off a copy of your case summary and highlight the necessary documents, showing them that it was filed appropriately.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specialized in divorce in California.  Please give us a cal for more information.

3 Easy Steps To Divorce In California

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Hi. My name is Tim Blankenship. I’m the owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist and we are a licensed and bonded legal document assistant firm specializing in divorce.

Today, I want to talk to you about the three steps of the divorce process when you work with our firm. We’ve broken it down into three digestible steps because there is an enormous amount of paperwork and it can be confusing.

The first step is for us to file and serve the initial divorce documents. This would be the summons and petition and there’s some other paperwork if you have children.

After the documents are file and service are completed, the second step is to complete your financial disclosures. Both parties are required to file and serve their financial disclosures. Now, this financial disclosure of this process is one of the most unliked processes of the divorce.

This is because you have to go through all your finances before marriage, during marriage, and after separation and put it all down on paper. Most don’t find this to be a fun process at all. After that, we move into the judgment phase.

We can prepare the divorce documents, prepare the judgment, put everything on paper, as pre request, and this will be in regards to the distribution of assets and debts as well as the in-child custody, child visitation and any other language you want incorporated into the judgment.

If you have any more questions about the divorce process when you work with a paralegal firm such as ours, please give us a call or use our website to get more information.

We are headquartered in Santa Clarita, California, and can assist you with your divorce anywhere in California.  Please give us a call at 661-281-0266.

How Divorce Document Preparation Works | California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Hi! My name is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist. I’m a licensed and bonded legal document assistant registered in the County of Los Angeles. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about what you can expect when you call our firm.

When you give us a call, the first process we’ll utilize is to have a phone consultation where we’ll ask you a series of questions on a better understanding of what your specific circumstances are and what you’re going through as far as your divorce is concerned.

Once we get a good idea of what the process is, we will discuss what the costs would be to prepare your specific forms and get you through the divorce process.

As far as the divorce process is concerned, we have broken it down into three digestible steps. The divorce process can be overwhelming at times so we have broken it down into these three steps which I’ll cover now.

The first process we will run you through is to file the initial paperwork. This will be the summons, the petitions and any remaining paperwork that is necessary based on your circumstances, whether you have kids and things at that nature. Once that is filed, we can serve that on the other spouse which will officially start the divorce process.

Part two is where we will have both parties prepare their financial disclosures. We can work with both parties to complete their financial disclosures and get those file with the court so we could move on to step three.

Step three is preparing the judgment. The judgment essentially takes all the information from the financial disclosures and all the wishes of both parties in an uncontested manner and documents the division of assets and debts and in any other parts of the divorce that you want included in the judgment will be wrapped up and included in the language of the judgment.

So that’s how we break it into three digestible steps and that’s a little bit about how our process works. When you do call us, we will talk to you more in detail about the process and exactly what you can expect, the time frames and so forth.

What Is A Divorce Legal Document Assistant | California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Hi! My name is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist. I’m a legal document assistant licensed and bonded through the County of Los Angeles to provide direct to consumer self-help legal services.

We’ve decided that we would specialize in only one field of law and that’s divorce. Divorce process is all we do; in fact, that’s where our experience comes from.

We have years of experience having worked in the family law courtrooms, in the self-help centers, and local area family law firms. We have the experience it takes to get you from start to finish in the divorce process and we could help you with all the divorce paperwork and help you procedurally in instructing you on how the courts operate.

What that means is, because we are not attorneys, we do not represent either side. Our sole function here is to help both parties prepare their divorce paperwork properly so it could be filed with the court and not get rejected. So when you call us, we can work with both you and your spouse to prepare your paperwork.

Now, we prepare paperwork exactly how a law firm would prepare your divorce paperwork—what that means is, when you’re working with us, we will parallel the process that a law firm would but for a fraction of the cost.

The benefit in doing this is that, if for whatever reason your case requires an attorney to assist you, you will not have to start over on the process. There are shortcuts to this and we do not take those shortcuts. So when you use our services, if for whatever reason you need to seek legal advice or use an attorney for representation at any point during the time we are helping you, you can take your paperwork and make them pick up exactly where we left off.

If you like more information about our services, please give us a call at 661-281-0266.

006 DMR | Now Offering Online California Divorce Solution

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

006 DMR | Now Offering Online California Divorce Solution

In Episode 6 of Divorce Master Radio, we discuss our offering of an online divorce product that will allow folks to file their divorce completely online using software that uses automated document assembly.

The way the software works is that it allows you to answer a series of online questions that will automatically populate the divorce documents so you don’t have to figure out what goes where.

The only thing you will have to do once the divorce forms are completed is to follow the procedure to properly file and serve all the documents.

Here is how we are different that other providers of online divorce services.

First of all, we are a full service divorce document preparation service in California.  We are offering our online process in addition to our full service process, because some people see more value in an online product.

Even if you decide to use our online divorce product instead of our full service divorce, you still get all the assistance you would normally get.

For instance, with other online divorce services, there is nobody reviewing your documents and nobody looking to see if you do things correctly.  They can’t.  They are huge corporations.

With us, you get total support and review of all your documents.  You also get a secure client portal to ask questions along the way.

In addition, we guarantee our service!  If you later decide that you no longer want to use the online service, we can upgrade you to our full service and give you full credit for what you paid for the online service.

This is a great value to folks going through divorce in California and we are exited to offer this product.

 

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California Divorce Forms You Will Need To Complete Your Judgment For Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

If you have been reading blogs in the past, you know that we are always giving out tons of free advice.  Today, we are providing all the divorce forms you will need to complete your California divorce Judgment.

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Do you want to know what is sad?  This huge stack of forms was given to a client of ours when they went down to court.  They were amazed that the forms had absolutely no instructions.  There is no form that says how to fill out any of the divorce papers.

All they received (which is what you see below) was the blank forms.

Good luck with that?

It is pretty scary to think that the divorce judgment is the most difficult part of the divorce paperwork to fill out.  We uploaded all the forms to slideshare and realized that is was more than 40 pages that you will have to complete if you are planning on doing your own divorce.

And this is just the final judgment forms for your divorce.  This does not count all the forms you had to fill out, serve and file with the court up to this point.

Here is the slideshare if you plan on attempting this on your own.

We have to admit, however, that the likelihood of you actually completing your own divorce is not very high.  We are just being honest with you.

We have people call our office everyday who have attempted and got stuck along the way and really messed up their divorce papers.  In most cases, we have to totally start over with filing an amended petition.

But we do know that there are people out there that are going to try it on their own. Perhaps they have more time than money and don’t mind spending countless hours trying to figure everything out and are not in a hurry to complete their California divorce.

Van Nuys Divorce Self Help Center

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

If you are going through a divorce in California and thinking about using the Van Nuys Divorce Self Help Center, I want to give you some tips, tricks, things to watch out for and alternatives to using the Van Nuys Divorce Self Help Center.

Let me first start by saying that if you have no money, are unemployed and have all the time in the world to wait in line, day after day, at the Van Nuys Divorce Self Help Center, then it can be a great  resource for you.

However, if you are a busy professional, don’t have time to spend several days (all day) waiting in line to get some help with your divorce, then the VanNuys Divorce Self Help Center is not for you and you will want to use a service like mine.

Watch this quick video where I explain in detail some of the advantages and disadvantages of using the Van Nuys Divorce Self Help Center.

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So as you can see, if you watched the video, the Van Nuys Divorce Self Help Center is great for people who cannot afford to hire a professional service to help them with their divorce.  The Van Nuys Divorce Self Help Center is also great for those who have the time to sit for hours on end waiting to get help with their divorce.

If you are a busy professional, or otherwise just don’t have the time to wait for assistance and would like someone to complete your divorce for you, go down to court for you and fill out all your forms, you are going to want to give us a call.

Here is how I tell people if they should use our service or not.

If you have more time than money, go to the Van Nuys Divorce Self Help Center.  If you don’t have the time and are both of you are working, you have to see what your actually losing in pay, leaving work to go down to the Van Nuys divorce self help center.

When you use our divorce service, you will save time and money.

Yes, we will also save you money because we are able to not only get you through the divorce process with one filing fee (not two) but because you are free to go on about your life without it being interrupted by you trying to file your own divorce.

Give us a call, we would love to help you out.

005 DMR – Understanding Filing Response During California Divorce (Podcast)

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

005 DMR – Understanding Filing Response During California Divorce (Podcast)

In our fifth episode of Divorce Master Radio, we go deeper into the procedure of California Divorce, specifically talking about what to do when you are served divorce papers in California and what your responsibilities are in filing a Response.

Just as a side note, we are impressed that in only a short few weeks, our Podcast has been downloaded and listened to a lot more than we thought would.  In fact, we weren’t sure if anybody would listen to it, but apparently we were wrong.

In this Podcast we talk at lengths about what to do after you have been served divorce papers, timelines, and what forms you need to complete to finalize your divorce.

Topics discussed:

  1. What forms you need to file a Response
  2. What the timelines are for filing a Response
  3. When financial forms need to be completed
  4. How long do you have to prepare and file and serve the financial disclosures
  5. The steps to completing your divorce
  6. Why the divorce process is easy and that people make it difficult
  7. How to file by mail
  8. That you don’t have to go to court
  9. How we can help you with your California divorce anywhere in California

We hope you enjoy episode 5 of Divorce Master Radio. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel on iTunes and Stitcher Radio.

 

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Income Withholding For Support Form FL-195 | How To File & Serve

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

The Income Withholding For Support form FL-195 just might be one of the most confusing forms to fill out while going through your California divorce.

We will get into how to fill it out, but first lets talk about what it does and why you might want to do it.

Also, we have a slideshare below where you can view a template of the Income Withholding For Support Form FL-195.

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Okay, the Income Withholding For Support Form FL-195 is a form you will fill out if there is an order for spousal support or child support and you want to have that support deducted directly from your spouses employer.  It is not mandatory that you do this, meaning your spouse can simply write you a check every month.

But if you feel there might be a problem collecting support from your spouse each month, you may want to fill out this form.  Just keep in mind that there is a specific way these needs to be done.

Here are the steps:

  1. Fill out the form (see template below)
  2. File with court and wait for judge to sign (so it becomes an official order)
  3. Serve on your spouses employer (by certified mail to ensure delivery)

The Income withholding for support form FL-195 can be used when you are submitting your final divorce papers (judgment) or anytime after.  You can also use this form if you recently had a hearing in court and there was an order for support or modification for support.

Also, if you will use this form if you need to modify or terminate spousal support or child support.  We will cover this topic in a future article.

We are a full service divorce company that can help your with your divorce anywhere in California.  Please make sure to give us a call if you need assistance with your California divorce.