Divorce A Good Time To Revisit Auto Insurance

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Divorce A Good Time To Revisit Auto Insurance

Tim: The liability extends for instance if they have low policy coverage of maybe $15,000 and then the injuries perhaps exceed…

Jon: Right.

Tim: …that they could go after. They reach out some other liability there?

Jon: Right, so, you bring up a good point which is the coverages. And when you go through a Divorce, most likely, you haven’t looked at your coverage for a few years.

And the coverage really should match the assets you have.

So if you know you have a million dollars with your assets, you should probably have the million dollars with the liability to protect that.

So as you separate and then your assets makes many change in a certain area. So there were many changes.

So it’s a good time to revisit. But to answer your question, about having lower limits like that you’re absolutely right.

So what happens is in my scenario where I have the accident, if I have little limits just because if someone sues me for a $100,000 and I’m carrying a State minimum like about $15000. I’m not personally liable for that extra $85,000.

If my wife is still registered on my car now, she just became liable for that, my ex-wife she just because liable for that as well.

Tim: Right.

Jon: So really it’s a good time especially if somebody else has been no one taking care of your insurance or you haven’t looked at your insurance in awhile, it’s really a good time to revisit those coverages and make sure you have the liability that you need.

Another piece of that is the uninsured mother’s support. So if for example, if you hit me and you don’t have enough insurance or you don’t have any insurance, my policy if I have the proper protection will still protect me as if you would have that insurance.

So that’s important too. So if you’re going to the review, that’s really good to go with it with a broker or agent and goes through all your policy coverages.

Make sure you understand what they need. And pick the levels that are right for you.

Tim: So if you had a million dollar that worth combined within you and your spouse and you’re going to have the assets, let’s say now $500,000 you’re not going to want that lower potentially?

Jon: You could. It’s one thing to consider especially in your time of saving cost and they will tell you that the cost different is very minimal.

In those kinds of situations and the other thing is it’s not all your assets, it’s what your future income is.

So you may not have a lot of assets but you’re making a hundred grand a year, then in California they can come after a portion of that.

They can garnish your wages. So one way or another it’s still a good idea to just kind of assess how much you have, how much you might be making and then swap the proper coverages.

And let’s say going through Divorce is a perfect time to think about those kinds of situations.

 

 

Life Insurance – What’s The Best Age To Lock In Long Term Life Insurance?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Life Insurance – What’s The Best Age To Lock In Long Term Life Insurance?

Tim: Now that makes me think something not really related to Divorce per se you’ve had mentioned you’re getting out the workforce in maybe in time.

What about folks kind of later in life 50, 60’s or 70’s retirement age retired? And I’m talking about my folks, specifically.

Jon: Okay.

Tim: My dad work for Union. He had some pensions with Union. Thank God! But he died of cancer.

My mom never worked. And is that a scenario where life insurance would have been beneficial or at that age is it more difficult to get that those types of insurance policies?

Or they cost prohibitive because it caught up my mom in a bad position because she has Social Security and a small pension.

Thankfully, there was at least that small pension that passed on to her. But —

Jon: Had there been insurance?

Tim: But had there been insurance policy to boot?

Jon: Right.

Tim: You know that’s something would get older to help protect their spouses. Is that–

Jon: At that point, it’s great if you can do it. And that’s what people at that age intended by life insurance for it for a State planning issues and all the cost associated with the State taxes.

And that’s other conversation for different expert here.

Tim: Sure.

Jon: So that’s what where we tend to see it. It is difficult for somebody as you start to get passed 55 or 60 it does starts to get fairly expensive because you can’t pay just $30 or $40 a month for a policy.

And they expect a million dollar path because when you’re that old, you’re getting closer to or like where the life companies expect you to not make anymore.

So it’s great if you can do it like maybe around 45 or so. And do something like maybe a 30 year policy.

Tim: Okay.

Jon: Then that way that will take you out into retirement. Then you can make the choice.

So let’s say now you’re 60 or 65 and when you look at your retirement fund and you look at your pension and you say, ‘If I did go is there enough?’

Because then you could stop. You don’t have to continue paying the life policy. But it gives you that choice.

And having that choice when you hit retirement is important because once you hit retirement you don’t really have a choice anymore.

So that’s how we tell people to get it and then we can re-evaluate. If you don’t need it anymore we either reduce it or pull it off.

It depends on the situation.

Tim: That’s good. Now kind of around 45 and try to lock in—

Jon: We should talk the terms.

Tim: Yes, I know we haven’t talked yet. I’ll just tell him I need a little weight to get the premium down a little bit.

Jon: There you go!

Tim: That’s my goal. And I can gain all the way back. That’s the plan. No!

Jon: I didn’t hear that.

California Divorce | Importance Of Changing Beneficiaries After Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

California Divorce | Importance Of Changing Beneficiaries After Divorce

Tim: Good. The beneficiaries and then we talked about a little bit on health or life specifically.

I don’t know if we touched on the importance of changing beneficiaries after the Divorce has finalized because we’ve all heard the whole stories not only with health life insurance but with…

Jon: Financial services and 401K’s and all those.

Tim: Yes, and investments where they are not changed. And is it going to your spouse?

And I’m sure that if you’re Divorce that wasn’t the intention. Because the important thing to know is, when it comes to you and let me know if this is correct or not.

When it comes to your Divorce judgment your Divorce Decree if you will, if you said, you’re keeping your life insurance policy or these investments, and you die and you haven’t changed your beneficiaries, that beneficiaries will over-way the ruling of the court.

Jon: That’s correct. So once the Divorce is final, that is the time when you are allowed to make the changes and it does makes sense to make the changes.

And then part of that though, one of the natural things to do is to go ahead and make changes on, when I’m going to make my kids as the beneficiary.

The problem with that is you have to be careful is no one is going to give a $100,000 policy to a six year old.

So you only have to worry about that. But the question is who handles that money during that time between until they become age 18?

And even once they become age 18, do you really want your child inheriting the $100,000 not inhering but getting a $100,000.

So this is where even when you separate, it’s the time to look at things like a state planning and things of that nature, so, that you can make sure that the policy benefits really are doled out way you want them to be doled out.

So it’s really a good time to kind of look at all your financial picture. Not just the insurance but the state planning. Look at things like 401K’s, look at things like your own retirement.

Tim: Yes.

Jon: What you’re going to do now? You can’t rely perhaps on your ex-husband’s pension.

Tim: Right.

Jon: What you’re going to do?

Tim: So it’s a really good time to take a step back and kind of put all your financial pieces in order.

How To Determine Life Insurance Needs After Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How To Determine Life Insurance Needs After Divorce

Tim: So we had a big picture everything that should be looked at when going through Divorce.

We talked about term insurance for covering the spousal support. We talked term insurance for covering potentially the childrens college education or maybe paying off their student loan debt or–

Jon: Exactly.

Tim: What are other things would you throw in there?

If I were talking about insurance today and I was going through a Divorce. And I’ve been married for 19 years.

And two kids are still minors, what things would you say, ‘Tim, if you want to make sure that they’re taken care of aside from the college and the spousal support, what are the things would you throw in there?

Paying off the house maybe or –

Jon: Right, and really it will depend on the situation your spouse is in. But yes, anything like that when there’s a foreseeable expense in the future might be a really good thing to add into the life insurance.

There’s also retirement, if you think about it this way, now the expectation is you’re going to keep working.

And you’re going to keep building the retirement fund. So even though we might replace your income or your child support, that retirement fund doesn’t keep building anymore.

So one of the other things that you can do with life insurance is let’s say, ‘Gee, if something happened and I can’t build that retirement fund, you use the life insurance to build that retirement fund.’

So that’s it. That’s a bigger piece. I mean it can add up to a bigger number but it’s an important factor because I don’t think people think they think well, ‘Gee, I just want to puff my house.’

Well, that’s great when you puff your house, then what? How are you still going to meet your monthly expenses?

And how are you ultimately going to be able to take yourself on the work force?

Tim: Right.

Jon: So I think looking at more than just even the current expenses, it’s looking for the future. What other cost you may have or what other investments you want to make?

And to making sure that the life insurance is there to take the place if your income can’t.

California Divorce & Life Insurance Considerations

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

California Divorce & Life Insurance Considerations

Tim: Let’s talk life insurance. Alright! Now this is big. There’s a lot of moving parts to this.

Jon: Absolutely!

Tim: Right. This is probably going to be the most we’re going to have to talk about here. I mean some of this, there’s going to be an overlap but there are issues of support and potential that to protect people.

Jon: Right. So one of the key issues here, one of the things that people probably are thinking about is most likely those people have life insurance policies have named their spouses as the beneficiary.

Meaning that if there’s something happened to them their spouse will be the one to get the proceeds from the life policy.

Obviously, if you’ve gone through a Divorce and as you’re going through the Divorce, you may want to make this change immediately.

You might say, ‘I don’t want that person to be, well I’m going to pull them off my life policy.’

On California at least you’re not able to pull your spouse off as a beneficiary without their signature prior to Divorce.

Okay?

Tim: And I’ll add to that.

Jon: Okay.

Tim: When you file Divorce on the summons itself, there are what’s called the Automatic Restraining Orders. Automatic Temporary Restraining Orders are going to effect.

They’re called ATROS. And they are Restraining Orders to restrain you from certain actions.

And one of them is removing your spouse as a beneficiary off of any type of policy whether it’d be life, as a beneficiary changing even auto insurance policies, beneficiaries on investments, none of that can be done without signature, without their approval, and without their knowledge until the Divorce is absolutely finalized.

Jon: Right?

Tim: So—

Jon: And even when it is finalized because maybe there’s the Temporary Restraining Order by the time and the insurance companies themselves are going to look and see if it was a spouse, you send them a form, they’re going to ask you to either have the spouse’s signature on it or see that the Divorce has been finalized and a copy of the final Divorce paperwork…

Tim: Right.

Jon: …in order to justify it. So everybody is working on the same page.

Tim: To protect each other and make sure that people are doing things they shouldn’t be.

Jon: Right.

Tim: Yes.

Beneficiary Options For Children During Divorce – California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Beneficiary Options For Children During Divorce – California Divorce

Tim: As it pertains to life insurance and with having young children and making them the beneficiaries, going through a Divorce, what are some of the options folks have?

Can they assign other beneficiaries or how does that work and how does that ultimately get transfer?

Jon: Yes, so changing beneficiaries for some is very easy. And it’s usually one page form. You say, ‘Now I want my brother to be the beneficiary.’ and you sign it.

It’s that simple.

So what we usually encourage people to do is that they’re not going to go down the road of some sort of trust, is to name a family an adult family member who’d be the one that they would expect to handle their affairs when something happened to them.

And so that maybe, I mean it’s still be a parent depending on how old you are. It maybe a brother or sister or somebody or an extremely close friend but that’s your choice to make.

And the changing it like I said is very simple.

Tim: Simple!

Jon: And then if a year from now you know you’re going to fight with your brother and you don’t want him to be the one, you change it again.

There’s no cost to changing beneficiaries. And it’s done within like a week or two. So it’s a very simple process.

Process Of Divorce In Torrance, CA Torrance Divorce Paralegal

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Process Of Divorce In Torrance, CA Torrance Divorce Paralegal

I want to explain the process of Divorce. What is the Divorce Process in Torrance California?

As you know there’s a Court House in Torrance that handles Divorce cases we service as a Paralegal Firm in the Torrance, California Court House as far as Divorces are concerned.

So I want to explain to you what is the Divorce process, what would we do for you if you hire us to help you with your Divorce in Torrance? What will that look like?

So first of all when you contract for services with us, we will take care of everything from start to finish.

All the forms, go down the Torrance Court House, file them, help with service with your spouse either by mail or personal whatever needs to happen, all the financial disclosures all the agreements from A to Z we’ll complete your case.

But initially the Divorce process looks like this, filling out that initial documents. One of you needs to decide who is going to be the petitioner.

Get and take it down all the completed documents after we get your signature. And take them down to Torrance, getting the case number issued and then that needing to be serve on your spouse.

Step two is pretty much financial disclosure stage. The court wants you guys to exchange information about how much you make, where you work, the bank account information, any assets and debts, cars, debts and credit cards and all that sort of things.

All that needs to be disclosed so you guys can figure out what’s going to be fair and equitable on the division of property.

Once you guys figured out what’s fair and equitable you guys let us know what’s that’s going to be. And we put that down in the appropriate court forms and submit what’s called your judgment.

Now keep in mind if you have trouble, if you’re unable to come to certain agreements it doesn’t mean you have to run out and hire an attorney.

There are other services such as Mediation that we can set you up with. Affordable mediation by the way and help someone sit down with you can come up with those agreements.

So you guys can come up with an agreements, we can put down in paper and it can be done without having the extra cost of hiring an attorney or having to litigate your case.

So that’s pretty much how the divorce process in Torrance works. But the initial steps just to get the initial documents completed.

We just need a few minutes on the phone with you. And you don’t have to come to our office.

We’ll get those signatures from you which can be fax to us and we’ll take them down to the court get then filed and that’s kind of have things start off with the Divorce Process in Torrance, California.

Please give us a call for free consultation. I’d love to help you out with your paperwork with your Divorce.

Uncontested Divorce Service In Torrance, CA Divorce Paralegal

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Uncontested Divorce Service In Torrance, CA Divorce Paralegal

Today we’re talking about Divorce in Torrance, California. We’re talking about our Uncontested Divorce Process for Torrance California.

We’re licensed and bonded Legal Document Preparation Firm. We specialize in Divorce.

So we are an affordable Divorce Paralegal Firm helping folks in Torrance, California.

I want to briefly let you know a little bit about what it is we can do for you and explain the Uncontested Divorce Process.

So Uncontested Divorce is where you and your spouse are working at least somewhat towards an agreement.

You’re not hiring an attorney, you’re not going to court, you may not be in total agreement but you know you want to get divorce, you want to save some money and you don’t want to have to hire attorneys and go down that path.

Those are the folks that we’re talking about here. At least, we bring that up because we are a licensed and bonded Document Preparation Firm specializing in Divorce in Torrance.

We are that company that’s going to save you some money. Help you all the way through your Divorce process.

In fact do everything a law firm would do for you except give legal advice and represent you in court.

Again, we’re talking about the cases that are uncontested. And we will do everything they can do. We have all the forms that they have.

We have all the paperwork they have, all the software that they have and what the courts have. So we can get you through your entire divorce case for one low flat fee.

We are a neutral party that works both with you and your spouse to get your case complete. And we do everything from filling out the forms, we’ll take care of your filled out forms.

And we’ll go down to the Torrance Court House and we will file them for you. We will get your case number issued.

And then when you talk about serving those on your spouse which we can simply do by mail.

After that we need to fill out the financial disclosures for both of you and your spouse, get everything on the table and what needs to be divided and how you’re going to divide it up.

And then put those agreements down on paper which is called the judgment. That’s essentially the process.

Now in between there you can hit road bumps. You can have some disagreements or misunderstandings or upset regarding certain things, we know this is Divorce. It’s not going to be completely amicable.

But the idea of uncontested divorce is that you’re working on working it out whether that be you and your spouse sitting at the kitchen table, whether that means us having to set you up with additional resources like Mediation to have a professional third party Mediator sit down with you and talk about how we can come to a resolution and all these issues.

And that’s how uncontested divorce cases work. When you go through an uncontested divorce cases in Torrance, the idea is that there’s no real winners or no real loosers that it’s a fair division of property that you’re happy with the orders regarding the children and child support and spousal support, that’s what it’s all about.

And but mostly about saving money. I want to get this video out there if you’re thinking about going through Divorce in Torrance you could give us a call.

You don’t even have to come to our offices. We have clients all throughout California. We can do this right over the phone or via email.

And we still will go to your Court House in Torrance and we’ll file. So you won’t have to go to court at all.

As long as it’s amicable and you’re not going to see a judge it’s not required. We can type up all the agreements.

And you don’t have to come to our office or go to the court house.

And we’ll even save some money on court fees if you come to us before filing, there’s a way we can save you a bunch of money on court fees.

Uncontested Divorce cases in Torrance, it’s our specialty. All we do is Divorce throughout California.

If you live in Torrance, California give us a call. We love to help you with your Divorce. We offer free consultations.

I want to talk to you specifically about your specific circumstances. And kind of walk you through how you see that playing out and moving through the process with you and your spouse.

And then get things started for you when you’re ready to move forward with your Divorce in Torrance.

Give us a call when you’re ready.

California Divorce – Should You Use 2 Realtors To Sell Your Home

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

California Divorce – Should You Use 2 Realtors To Sell Your Home

Connor: Everybody has to adhere to it.

Tim: I even heard of each spouse having a separate realtor. Have you heard of that?

Connor: I have.

Tim: It sounds like a nightmare.

Connor: It comes up. And again now you have and it makes a lot of sense in some cases depending on the relationships and how easy the break apart is going to be.

But yes, we encounter that where the Mrs. is going to have their own agent of representing them. And then the Mr. is going to have their own agent representing them.

And that now you have more chefs in the kitchen. It really creates a lot of drama which brings me to something important.

You need to find out the source. If you’re being referred to an agent, if you’re in the middle of the Divorce, you’ve been referred to by an agent and that agent is telling you and they’ll say, ‘Okay, this is the person that we need to use.’

I would ask straight up the person that I am divorcing from, I would say ‘Well, what’s your relationship with this person?’ because everybody is always concerned with somebody making more money.

If there’s a $150,000 profit after everything is finished in the Divorce, each spouse is always thinking at the back of their mind ‘I hope my Mr. isn’t taking me for granted.’ or ‘My Mrs.—‘  because typically it’ll all comes down to money, I’m sure.

Tim: Usually with anything I mean money the spousal support, child support and all usually it has something to do with money.

California Divorce – Selling Your Home At A Later Date

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

 California Divorce – Selling Your Home At A Later Date

Tim: I skipped one of our four. I missed see the slides. Sell at a later date.

So if I had four options. You had another about the rental. That was good.

So sell, refinance, keep existing mortgage, sell at later date or rent it out. We have people doing that.

But selling at a later date, we have folks that having their primary residence or a vacation home –

Connor: I’m so sorry!

Tim: …or a rental of some sort, that they’re making rents on. Okay, let’s say, it’s a rental or any of those types of homes.

And either the values not there or they want to hopefully go up in value so they can sell.  So we have a specific circumstance with a client, vacation house, they make rent.

It’s like an Aspen or something like that Big Bear, I don’t know. And they rented out and they make money up but they sold, there’s not enough value. They overpaid for it back when real estate is blooming.

So they want to wait several years before they sell it. That was the agreement. We’ll continue to share the rents and ends the property together but we don’t want to sell it because it’s going to be at lost.

So they short sale it. They don’t want to ruin their credit. So that’s it.

Another option is to sell at a later date. And usually you have to make sure you have enough language in your Divorce agreement, that doesn’t leave us so open-ended that you can’t go to court and say, ‘It’s time to sell.’

Connor: Enforcing.

Tim: It has enough language to have some enforceability. So it can’t be totally open-ended.

So you need to say something to the fact of like in this case we said, within five years the parties will meet and confront on a yearly basis to determine their appraised value for purposes of selling, not to cover the fees and so forth of selling the property and without a loss.

So that way if you get to that point and it’s there. And the other party said, ‘No, I just want to keep it. You can go back to the court and say, ‘No, this is what we agreed to.’ and get the court intervene.

Connor: Yes, I think that sell at a later date thing even though and I totally get that scenario. It’s tough.

I mean how do we know? Again just like back in ‘06 and ’07 shared properties are going up hand over fist like money was free.

And been practically wise but the whole general consensus even from some really brainy financial advisers out there was its trend was going to continue but it didn’t.

Tim: Yes.

Connor: So it fell off. Sell at a later date, tough. I know any agent would always be there for their client.

And if in fact that’s what they decided to do in a future, they would. But again you have to ask yourself where are we going as a market?

Where are we trending? What possible obstacles would there be in the future? It’s a tough scenario.

Tim: Yes. I mean it sound as already a negative equity. And it was going to be a short sale now.

And let’s say it doesn’t go up in value. And they sell it five years later. And at least they’ve got some rents I suppose or—

Connor: Yes.

Tim: Let’s give it a quick sale than throw it away, I’m sure the plus is that maybe they get out of it break even right.

Connor: Yes!

Tim: Okay! Because in today’s market and you’re asking people to basically an agent to say like the stock market.

Yes, they think the house is going to keep going up or down. I mean you’re really taking chance there.

Connor: Yes, that’s a trade line, right? So somebody called a real estate agent on the phone and says, ‘Is it a good time to buy?’

‘Yes! Buy right now!’ That’s the typical way it’s done.

Unfortunately, right now in Santa Clarita Valley, here’s some truth, we’ve seen prices being flat for the last couple of months.

And it doesn’t look like the prices are going to continue to go up.

Tim: Really?

Connor: It would give an appearance right now because now we’re getting more and more inventory. We’re seeing a lot of price changes.

So this is something to ask that agent, ‘Where are in the market?’

Tim: Right.

Connor: ‘Is there a buyers market?’ We’re still in the seller’s market. But that trend is now shifting because of the excess inventory we see more days on market timeframes.

We see a lot more properties having their prices changed. And those changes are positive or negative they’re actually reducing.

We don’t see the actual sales prices changing. But again that will eventually happen if we keep on the trend.

There’s no new buyers that come out in to the market wanting to purchase at the current levels. There’s no other place where to go.

Tim: The whole evolution is so interesting in the transition from equity growing and home prices going up to how buyers and sellers realizing, ‘Why is my house is on the market too long?’

And then buyers saying, ‘Well, I noticed that there’s price reduction.’ so everyone just kind of sits on the fence.

Connor: Absolutely!

Tim: There’s like this delay.

Connor: Correct. And so that’s where we’re saying right now. A lot of buyers they’re waiting. And we have a plethorawe’re working with.

They’re just waiting. And I get that. And we have sellers. The biggest question today from a seller is ‘When am I going to move?’

‘Okay, so I want to upgrade from this house. Is there going to be a house for me?’

It’s not to that point where I could say, ‘100%, yes!’

Tim: Right

Connor: And then the other question ‘What do I do if I sell this?’ We should make this sale contingent on me finding the home of choice.

And so then that becomes a tough scenario for a buyer when there are 50 other houses.

Tim: And you kind of tie up three different people, right?

Connor: Yes, so then the other buyers so ‘I don’t want to ride this far. This house is contingent. I’m finding another house.’

Tim: And now will I be contingent on them buying one.

Connor: Oh, real deep! And then it’s like a house of cars.

Tim: Yes.

Connor: You go through the whole thing. And it could be 10-20. I mean infinite numbers deep one person in there that’s contingent, they give the whole thing done.

Tim: Collapsed.

Connor: Yes, It’s very interesting.