California Divorce |Trial Setting Conference Now Requires Court Reporter Fee

I want to start off by saying I handle a lot of Divorce cases 40-50 Divorce cases every month. And these are Divorce cases where we handle the entire process from start to finish.

And because we file so many Divorce cases we’re usually the first to find out some new rule or new procedure with the Divorce courts.

And today we found out a new rule that just came up with. It’s not necessarily new. It’s just something that there’s been a change.

So one of the new rule that happened recently in Los Angeles County I’m sure it’s going to spread throughout the remaining counties in California, is the court you’re asking that parties who appear at hearings that they request, so, motions requested for order, order to show cost type hearings are they’re going to ask that you pay a court reporter fee.

This is the fee that the court uses to pay because court reporters are not part of the court system. They kind of run their own business in a way.

So now when you file a motion or ask for hearing you’re going to have to pay in addition to any court fees. Right now it’s a $30 court reporter fee.

Now this was a common practice recently for request for orders and things in that nature. The change now is for trial setting conferences.

So if your case is not moving forward usually what is recommended is you file a trial setting conference so it gets the court involved and they’ll start setting a series of hearings moving you towards a trial.

First hopefully you can come to an agreement at some point but if not you’ll end up a trial. But the trial setting conference was a routine request and it did not require a fee.

It was a no fee filing. And you need to appear in your hearing and it was part of your overall court filing fee.

Now and this was just today, we’re notified by a client who’s representing himself that because we set a trial setting conference request they received a notice and the mail says by the way when you appear you’ll be required to pay a $30 court reporter fee for the hearing.

So that’s the update today. If you file a trial setting conference, there is going to be a $30 fee now because the court houses and the court departments within the courthouses all either don’t pick up on the new policies right away or they handle there differently.

If you don’t asked to pay then you got lucky but you can anticipate that. We’re going to see this is a common practice across the courts in California asking for court reporter fee for trial setting conferences.

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