Watch Out For Divorce Services That Cut Corners | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

The business of providing legal services is ripe with fraud.  That is why there are many rules one must follow in order to become licensed in the field of providing divorce legal services as we do in Santa Clarita.

We have obtained those licenses to provide our Santa Clarita divorce service which required that we proved we had the necessary educations, experience and background.

Unfortunately, there are many that have no experience and are unlicensed who are out there offering their services to the public illegally and who put a bad stain on this industry.

Yesterday I received a call from someone who at first was asking about costs for certain services I provide.  I was asking some questions of this person who I later determined was calling under false pretenses.  Meaning he was not a real or potential client, but was asking questions as if he was one.

This person finally said that they were a process server who also provided family law services and had questions about how we operate.

Seriously, you are a process server and you also provide family law services?  He started to tell me how he does divorce cases and all the corner cutting that he does.

This person had absolutely no clue about how to complete a divorce, but had all the ways to cheat the system worked out.  Meaning how he could do as little as work as possible by not following the court procedure.

This is exactly the type of people that are out there offering their divorce services that you have to watch out for.

So when you are calling around trying to ask how much it is for a divorce, you best make sure to check if they are even licensed to provide the service.

I can guarantee that if you are shopping around for a divorce service  based on price and want the lowest bidder, you are going to end up with one of the characters.

I badly want to post who this person is as I found them online.  But i will just hope they read this post and figure out it was them.  I am just glad this person is not in Santa Clarita.

If you are reading this I suggest you either get licensed to practice in this field and pay your bond and go through the steps to educate yourself and the necessary training to be in this industry.

Or just go back to process serving and stick to what you know.

How To Demand Financial Disclosures During Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When going through a divorce there are many forms that have to be filed and served on the other party.  It can get very confusing which divorce forms to fill out.

But what do you do when the other party is not completing the divorce forms they are supposed to complete?

This article deals specifically with how to request the preliminary declaration of disclosure.  This is the schedule of assets and debts and income and expense declaration.

If you are going to file a uncontested divorce or hybrid divorce, both parties will need to complete their financial disclosures.  The divorce process cannot proceed until both parties have completed this step of disclosing their finances and served them on the other party.  It is mandatory that both parties to the divorce complete this step.

Sometimes one of the spouses will not want to complete this step for one reason or another.  But because it is necessary, you will need to nudge them a little.

Here is what we do to ask for someone to complete their financial disclosures.

First, don’t ask for theirs until you have filed and served yours.  So complete your set of disclosures.  When you serve them on your spouse, include a letter that asks that they complete their disclosure withing 30 days.

Wait the 30 days and if no response or no disclosures completed, you can take the next step.  This would be to file a demand with the court.  You would file a “Demand For Production Of Preliminary Declaration Of Disclosure” on the other party.

It is not a discovery request, but rather a demand that they complete their preliminary declaration of disclosure.  This form is filed with the court and then served on the other party.  This lets them know that you mean business and that the court is aware of the request.

In the demand for production of Preliminary Declaration of Disclosure you will indicate the same thing you did in the letter.  Let them know that pursuant to Family Code Section 2104 and 2107 that they have 30 days to complete their disclosures and that failure to comply with this demand may result in you filing a motion with the court to compel such production.

Hopefully, these steps will get your spouses attention and they will complete the necessary documents so you can complete your divorce.

We are a licensed divorce service located at 27240 Turnberry Lane, Ste. 200 Valencia, CA 91355.  Please call us if you would like more information about our services.

You Have 30 Days After Divorce Petition Served To File Response | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

If you are going through a divorce in California, one thing you will receive is the Summons.  The divorce Summons can be scary to read so I wanted to discuss this form in detail.

The first thing the divorce summons says is “You Are Being Sued”.  What do you mean you are being sued?  Look, while this is a family law matter, it is still a lawsuit filed in a court of law.  You just need to get over it.  And understand this. You are being sued, but not like in civil court where you are the defendant because someone has alleged you have done something wrong.

The next thing you will read is the following caption:

“You have 30 calendar days after this Summons and Petition are served on you to file a Response at the court and have copy served on the Petitioner.  A letter or phone call will not protect you.  If you do not file your Response on time, the court may make orders affecting your marriage, your property, and custody of your children…”

Of all the divorce forms, this one troubles people the most and I want to discuss a few things.

First of all, what the court is referring to about the “30 days to file a response” is in regards to the other party having the ability to file a “Request to enter Default”.  While technically it is true that you need to file a response in 30 days, it is not necessary if you are planning on proceeding by way of default or by using a hybrid judgment for your divorce.

I am a big fan of the hybrid divorce.  This is a cross between a default and an uncontested.  A hybrid divorce judgment allows you to do all the things required by an uncontested divorce (both parties complete financial disclosures and enter into a written agreement) and a true default divorce.

When preparing a hybrid style divorce, you do not have to worry about filing a response.  So while the Summons says you have to file a response or risk losing certain rights, it is not part of the paperwork when completing a hybrid divorce in California.  This is because with a hybrid a request to enter default will be filed.

The difference is that the request to enter default will be submitted with the final divorce judgment along with the agreement instead of after the 30 day mark.

If you have more questions about the California Divorce Summons or about the “30 days to respond” language, please feel free to give us a call.

We are a licensed divorce service located at 27240 Turnberry Lane, Ste. 200 Valencia, CA 91355 and can be reached at 661-281-0266.

Santa Clarita Divorce Service Celebrating National Small Business Week

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We are proud to be a small business in Santa Clarita.  And if you didn’t know, this week is National Small Business Week, so we are celebrating.

But what are we celebrating exactly?  Well, we have worked hard to grow our small business in the last year.  We have taken our Santa Clarita divorce service from a home based business working out of our loft to a executive office in Valencia with 3 employees in less than a year.  That is cause for celebration.

When we first started, we would meet clients at Starbucks on the corner of Valencia Blvd and The Old Road.  When we first started we were not sure if this would be a viable business model.  We were pretty sure there was a demand for affordable divorce services in Santa Clarita, but were not sure if there was enough demand to allow us to keep our prices low enough for most people to afford our service.

After a little more than a year, our Santa Clarita divorce business is doing well.  We now employ three people in Santa Clarita.  When we hired our first employee, the business took on an entirely new feel.  I now was responsible for the welfare of another persons livelihood.  It is like when you have a baby, you realize it is no longer just about you.

We are also now working with the College of the Canyons Paralegal Program and assisting with training some of their soon-to-be-paralegals who are required to complete (2) sixty hour internships as part of their curriculum.  Some of their students perform internships with us and learn the in’s and out’s of working with a family law divorce service.

Running a small business is tough.  We put in a lot of hours to keep the business going.  Having a small business means thinking about it 24 hours a day and it can really consume you.

We are looking forward to expanding our services into the surrounding counties over the next couple of years.

Here is to all the Santa Clarita small business who make this community great and provide jobs and services to our community.

 

 

Don’t Start Your Divorce On Your Own | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

As a self help divorce service in Santa Clarita, we are big proponents of doing your own divorce.  But we don’t recommend you actually do it yourself. Rather we suggest you use a divorce preparation service such as ours.

What we mean by saying we are proponents of doing your own divorce , we mean that you don’t need to hire an attorney to complete your divorce.  You can use our divorce service and because we don’t represent you, you are considered to be doing your own divorce.

We want to make a recommendation.  We suggest that you don’t attempt to do your own divorce without assistance.  We have found that many people start the divorce process, but are never able to finish it.

They are told that it is easy and they can do it themselves.  While this is technically true, it is a rare occasion when someone actually navigates the divorce process successfully on their own.

For those that do attempt to start their divorce, we find that when they come to us for help, it is much more work for us to fix the mistakes you have made on the paperwork than had we just prepared the entire divorce package.

We have clients who call us and want to know how much it would cost to finish their divorce and that they “have already completed most of the paperwork”.  Well, we have learned that the more paperwork “that has been completed” the more work it will actually be for us.

We have never had a client come to us, who had prepared some of the paperwork, where we did not have to fix something.

So what we do in these cases where someone has prepared some of their documents is to complete a case review.  We will look at everything you have done so far and make any corrections and amend the forms as necessary.

So don’t start your own divorce.  Because even if you come to us after doing some of the forms, we are likely going to have to spend more time fixing them.

We Prepare File and Serve Your Divorce Papers | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Are you looking for a divorce service in Santa Clarita that can take care of your entire divorce?  We are just that company.  We take care of everything from preparing your forms to serving them and filing them with the court.

We are your one stop shop and full service divorce company serving all of Los Angeles County and centrally located in Santa Clarita.

There are divorce services online where all they do is send you the divorce forms.  You can order the divorce papers totally blank or you can use some automated document assembly to prepare your forms.

There are many problems with this.  There is nobody to review your documents before you have them printed.  I can’t tell you how many clients I have who came to me after using one of these online divorce services.  They basically just through away their money.

The next problem with this is that you are not aware of the court procedure on how to file and serve your divorce forms.  This is where people really have trouble.

The interesting thing is that we don’t charge that much more than these online companies charge and we provide so much more.  Our divorce service has such tremendous value.  Not to mention that we can save you $435 on the costs of filing your divorce when you use our service.

We are the only full service divorce company that will prepare, file and serve your divorce papers in Los Angeles County.  We operate just like a law firm does and prepare all the forms exactly the same way.  This way if you ever needed an attorney for some reason, most of your paperwork will already have been completed.

Give us a call to discuss your particular situation.  We will be happy to provide you with a free over the phone consultation.

What Our Santa Clarita Full Service Divorce Firm Does For You

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When people call our Santa Clarita divorce service, they often want to know all what we do.  Well, we are a full service divorce company which means we take care of everything.  Lets discuss this in detail.

We Prepare All The Divorce Forms

We prepare all the divorce forms for you.  This is as opposed to send you a long questionnaire to have you fill it out. (which is the standard in the industry).  Most companies that provide legal document preparation will place the burden on you to complete a long (sometimes 25 page long) questionnaire.  What they expect you to do it all the work basically.

That is not how we operate.  We will prepare all your documents for you.  You simply provide the information we request and documents we require and sign your name.

We File All Documents With The Court

Did you know that other companies will complete your documents, then tell you to go to the court and file them? Unbelievable.  We operate just like a law firm does, which means we employ an attorney service that files all our divorce papers for us.  This means you never have to go to court and your forms are hand carried to the courts.  This ensures a fast and secure way of getting your divorce forms filed with the court.

We Serve All Divorce Documents

Again, being full service means taking care of everything.  This includes handling the service of all your documents.  This part can be tricky if your not familiar with court procedure.  Some forms have to be filed, others do not.  Some divorce forms have to be personally served, while others can be served by mail.  We take the guesswork out of the divorce procedure and handle this for you.

We Prepare And Submit Your Final Divorce Papers

When all the procedural steps to the divorce have been completed and documents done, we will prepare your final judgment or agreement.  Once the parties agree on the terms of the divorce, we will prepare the final agreement.  After your judgment is signed, it needs to be submitted to the court.  We do this for you. We will have your judgment hand delivered to the judgment clerk at the court.  This will ensure your case is reviewed quickly by the court and approved.

This was just a glimpse of what we provide with our Santa Clarita full service divorce.  Of course we always available for questions along the way. Because we have worked for large Santa Clarita law firms and the courts, we understand the forms and divorce procedure like the back of our hand.

When you are ready to file for divorce, don’t make the mistake of trying to do it yourself or spending thousands of dollars using an attorney.  Just give us a call and we will take care of your divorce from start to finish.

More Layoffs Announced For LA Courts | Divorce To Take Longer

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

It was announced this week that the Los Angeles Superior Courts were going to get rid of more than 500 jobs this week.

Here is the numbers.

  • 511 Jobs cut by the end of this week.
  • 177 people to lose their jobs.
  • 139 people will receive demotions and pay cuts
  • 223 people transferred to new work locations

For those of us in the business of divorce, this will most certainly result in slower service, longer waits for cases to be heard and for divorce cases to be approved by the court.  Hard to think it could get worse.  As it is now, it takes up to 6 months to get a divorce judgment approved…

Since 2008, some courts have closed and there have been almost 900 people let go.

So as the level of service goes down, the costs to get divorced go up.  What an amazing business model.  If anyone else ran their company like this, they would not last long at all.

So what does this mean for those going thorough a divorce?  First of all that 6 month waiting period or “cooling off” period you hear about simply won’t matter.  There will be no way to complete your divorce in 6 months anyways.  The file will never see a judges eyes in that time-frame.

For those in a hurry to finalize their divorce, one recommendation is to get your judgment in as soon as possible.  For those who work with us and have mostly amicable divorce cases, we can complete your paperwork in 30 days and submit it to the court.  Then, at least, we are in line for approval.  Don’t make the mistake of waiting the 6 months before submitting your divorce judgment.

So it will take longer to get divorced in Los Angeles County.  Let’s hope this is the last round of layoffs for the Los Angeles Superior Court system.  Only time will tell what these layoffs translate as far as service is concerned.

 

Are You Working With A Divorce Solo Practitioner Attorney | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When it comes to family law attorneys in the Santa Clarita valley, you only have a handful of choices.  Don’t get me wrong, there are still plenty out here, but it is still a small community.

Many divorce attorneys in the Santa Clarita Valley are what you call “Solo Practitioners”.  This means that they practice alone without a partner attorney.  In most cases, this also means that they do not have any staff such as a receptionist or paralegal to assist them.

This brings me to the topic I wanted to address.  If you are working with a solo practitioner who does not have a staff or paralegal assisting them, you are going to end up paying the attorney’s hourly rate for everything that is done on your divorce case.

Case in point.  I had a new client that had me file their divorce case.  She just wanted to file the petition and get things started with our company because she felt there was a good chance she would need a divorce attorney down the road.

So we filed the summons and petition and had her spouse served.  She then went on a consultation with a divorce attorney in Santa Clarita.  The divorce attorney was a solo practitioner with no staff or paralegal to assist him.  So she asked what his hourly rate is.  He responded that he charges $300 per hour.

The next step for her was to complete her financial disclosures.  This is hardly a process that requires and attorney to prepare.  What shocked me was that the attorney actually advised her to continue working with us to prepare her financial disclosures because it would be cheaper.

If she was to use this attorney’s services at this point, she would be looking at spending around $1,500 to complete her financial disclosures.  We can do that for a fraction of that cost.

I have talked about this many times in the past.  There is no reason to hire an attorney until you need them for legal advice or to represent you in court.

This client did exactly what someone should do who is looking to save money on their divorce, even if they need an attorney.  She hired our divorce legal to get the process started.  She had us file the summons and petition and have her spouse served.  We are preparing her financial disclosures and serving those as wel and are completing the filing with the court.

Now she can take her completed documents over to her attorney who can now litigate her divorce if necessary.  For more information you can read the article where we discuss having us start your divorce in Santa Clarita even if you know you will need an attorney by clicking on this link.

Important To Remember What Happened In Court | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We have had several of our clients go to court lately.  No matter how many times I tell them to remember what happens in court, they often forget.

I don’t blame them.  There is a lot going on and they are nervous and in unfamiliar territory.  The problem is that we need to know what orders the judge made so that we can do what they said to do.

Most recently we had a client go to court and the judge made some orders.  Our client called us to inform us that he was not sure exactly what the judge said he had to do.

All he could remember is that a new trial date was set and that he was supposed to complete his judgment before the trial date.

When this happens, we want to make sure what was said in court so we can complete whatever the judge informed us to.  So what we did was have our attorney service go to the department and ask for a copy of the minute order.  Click on this link for more information of what a minute order during a divorce hearing is.

When we received the minute order, it said that he was supposed to give his spouse notice of the next hearing.  He did not hear that part.  Here is the problem with that.  If he had not contacted us to help him with his divorce, he would have not known about giving notice of the next hearing.

Seems harmless enough, but had he shown up to court without giving notice of the hearing and trial, he would have shown up and the court would have realized that the other party was not informed of the hearing and had to continue the case to yet another court date.

Representing yourself during your divorce can be very challenging and have significant setbacks.  No wonder it takes people representing themselves during divorce so long to get through the process.

We recommend you use a competent divorce firm to help you with your divorce paperwork.

SCV Legal Doc Assist

27240 Turnberry Lane, Ste. 200 Valencia, CA 91355