How To Prepare California Divorce Papers (With Kids) *First Steps*

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How To Prepare California Divorce Papers (With Kids) *First Steps*

Today we are talking about how to prepare your California divorce when you have kids and this is specifically the first step.

This is the paperwork you’ll need to file in order to get the documents stamp by the court so you can get your spouse served. This will handle the first step of filing your California divorce when you have kids.

This is going to include the summons, the petition, the case cover sheet or nose of assignment if you have those forms for your court. It’s a little bit different each county.

Give us a call if you have any questions on that. And when you have kids, you have to fill another form called a UCCJEA.

Now, the great thing about this video is we’re going to put a link in the bottom where you can get the self-help forms off of a slide share that we created that has the instructions.

We are a full service divorce document preparation firm in California. We’d love to prepare your forms for you and walk you through the process and do all the work for you.

However, we know that there are clients out there that don’t have the money to hire us. They have more time than money perhaps and they want to attempt to do this on their own, so we are providing these documents online with arrows and directions and instructions on exactly how to fill out the forms.

For those of you, who want to use our service please give us a call at 661-281-0266 or click the link below. They’ll take you directly to our website for more information on pricing and so forth.

But, I wanted to get this information out there for folks who are having trouble getting information offline or online or with your local court. A lot of times it’s hard to find out the forms you need and the steps and even if you get the forms it’s basically comes down to how do you fill them out.

So, these forms are pretty helpful, they are right from the self-help clinics for Los Angeles County. I’ve gone over them, they are pretty thorough.

Again, we provide this as a full service. We’d be happy to take care of all these for you but for those folks who are going to do that on their own or at least attempt this first phase of things. Please use these forms, they are very helpful.

You can click over to the slide share. I’m going to put a link directly to the slide share below so you can find our blog below, divorce661.com.

Also, I have the link to the slide share with instructions on how to fill out the forms.

I hope that’s helpful. Please call us if you like to use our full service process. We do serve all of California. Our number here is 661-281-0266.

Why You Don’t Want To Use LegalZoom For Your Santa Clarita Divorce

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Why You Don’t Want To Use LegalZoom For Your Santa Clarita Divorce

Today I’m talking to you about the pros and cons of using LegalZoom for your Santa Clarita divorce.

I just stepped into the office and return the phone call I received over the weekend for the client in Santa Clarita saying they have a simple divorce, no cases, no property and by the time I returned their call, he mentioned he had already used another service.

I asked him who you end up using, and he said that he is using LegalZoom.

And there’s really a lot of cons, I should say. Negatives to using LegalZoom and I want to talk to you about that a little bit.

The first thing is, you have to do everything yourself. They’re going to give you a form, questionnaire that you pay for. I think its $299. And you’re going to have to fill out all the questions on this questionnaire online.

Then what happens is they’ll print out the documents for you and basically what it does is it’ll take the information you plug into the questionnaire and place it into the forms.

The bad part about that is nobody is going to review your documentation. It’s all computerized.

I had a client that used LegalZoom and they filled out the forms incorrectly, printed them, they were delivered to their home, couple of days or weeks later. And they received some of the forms blank, some of the forms are wrong.

But it’s all because the information they plug in there was incorrect or in the wrong spots so you have to be careful for that.

Probably, the worst thing about using any of these types of services, LegalZoom or any of these document assembly services is that you have to do all the leg work and you’re going to have twice the fees so let’s talk about that.

When you use these types of services, you’re going to have to do the leg work.

You’re going to have to go down the court. You’re going to have to follow the procedures of court. You’re going to file your form, serve your forms, file all the documentations. Do all your financial disclosures and do the same for your spouse as well.

Where people get hung up is on the procedure. Filing of the forms is done correctly but the procedure can be done wrong and this includes the judgment which is your final agreement which can be very difficult to complete.

When that happens, you want to make sure you’re using a service, someone you can call like us. Who can take care of that.

The leg work is all going to be on you.

Now, another issue with these document assembly service like this is that you’re going to have to pay twice the amount of fees. When you file for a divorce in California, when you file you have to pay a filing fee and when your spouse files a response, she has to pay a filing fee.

When you use these online service providers, their directions require you to file the fees twice. You have a response fee and you’re going to have a fee for the petition.

Now, you’re going to have to pay, that’s almost $900 in fees for court services because LegalZoom can’t tell you that there is a process in LA County where you can get away with only one filing fee.

So, it’s going to be twice as expensive from the court fee perspective.

You’re going to do all the leg work and at the end of the day when you use our service, even though we have a higher cost for doing it. You are going to be out the door a lot less money than you would be using these online service providers.

Now, quickly what we do is we’ll prepare, file and serve all your documents. We go down the court. We do all the leg work. And you only have to pay one filing fee.

When you use our service, and because you only have one filing fee, our higher costs are absorbed by that lack of not having to pay that filing fee.

Therefore, the costs are the same or less when you use our service as supposed to one of these online services and we’re doing all the work for you.

I just wanted to get that across to you, if you’re in Santa Clarita thinking of using one of these online services, please give us a call. We’d be happy to go down and show you how our pricing are less and how we can do all the work for you.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

Give me a call. 661-281-0266 or visit our website at divorce661.com for more information.

How To File A California Divorce Stipulation For Spousal Support

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How To File A California Divorce Stipulation For Spousal Support

Today we are talking to you about how to file a California stipulation for spousal support.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that when going through divorce in California, you can stipulate to certain things that you agree to without having to go to court, without having to go to the mediator.

You can do these things on your own by drafting stipulation as to the terms of the agreement and you can both sign it, it can submitted to court and the court will sign it, the judge will sign it. And once that happens, it will be a court order.

It’s an easier way to do things than going to court. And then my line of work of specializing in California divorce and working with people that are going to the divorce process in California, on their own, representing themselves, often times they’ll need help with these sort of thing.

And they think they have to go to court, they think they have to get an attorney, all kinds of different things that are going to their heads when in reality, all you need to do is file a stipulation.

Now, the title of this video is how to file a stipulation for spousal support. But this really pertains to anything.

If you need help with something like this, feel free to give me a call. We have a paid service. We’d be happy to prepare your stipulation for you for whatever it is that you guys are agreeing on and you want to have it made as an order.

I’ve also embedded in this video, what I’ll do is I’ll put a link into this video to a slide share that I’ve created. My slide share account that you’ll be able to get the language.

What I’ve done is I’ve taken one that we’ve submitted to court here in California, in Los Angeles County. It was approved by a judge, all the language is legally sufficient, and I gave you three different scenarios: one for spousal support, one for child support, and a way of asking for something else.

In this case it was asking for one of the parties to pay half of the cost of the tuition for their children.

You can use the language. You can go ahead and copy the language if you wanted to. I can create this stipulation for you if you need assistance.

But again, look below this video and I will have the link to the slide share. I’ll also have a link to the blog post that I wrote at divorce661.com and you guys can read about the stipulations and what they can be used for, how you can create them.

And then again, the slide share is there so you can get the language right off the stipulation if you wanted just to write it on your own.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. We specialize in California divorce.

We’re here to help you, if you need assistance please give me a call. 661-281-0266. You’ll always get more information off our website at divorce661.com.

California Divorce | When You Need To Notarize Your Divorce

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California Divorce | When You Need To Notarize Your Divorce

Today I want to talk to you about when you need a notary, when you need to notarize your divorce paperwork in California.

We specialize in divorce. We are a legal document preparation service in California. We are actually in Santa Clarita, which is in northern Los Angeles County. We specialize in divorce in California.

I want to talk to you about when you need to notarize your divorce documents. There appears to be a lot of confusion on this issue.

First we need to talk about the different types of divorce cases. So you’d understand what case you have, what style of divorce you have as you all know if this applies to you or not.

First off, we have what’s called a true default case.

A true default case is one where you file, your spouse does not file a response, they don’t participate, they don’t sign anything, they don’t cooperate, they are not involved at all. That’s what is called a true default case and you do not need to notarize your signature.

The court knows you file for divorce, they noted that’s who you are and when you submit your judgment you do not need to notarize your documents.

The next style of divorce is what’s called a uncontested divorce. This is where you have filed for a divorce, your spouse has responded and you’re going to enter into an agreement or go to court or something along those lines.

Those types of cases when you enter your judgment, again, you do not need to have your signature notarized, either one of you.

The third style is what we call a hybrid. It’s also referred to as a default with agreement. This is the case where you’re going to file for divorce, your spouse is not going to respond officially and they’re going to enter into a written agreement with you.

You’re going to sign, you’re going to give out disclosures, you’re going to enter into a written agreement, sign the judgment.

On this particular style of case, you will need to have the respondents signature on the judgment only notarized prior to submitting it to the court.

The reason for this is, because the respondent never actually filed a response. The court wants to make sure it is actually them involved in the case and not some other third party.

If you want more information on these different types of cases, they all end in divorce. It really just depends on if your spouse has responded, not responded, or if you are entering into a written agreement. They all end up with divorce. It’s just the type of paperwork that required for each of those different types.

We generally will use the default with agreement or hybrid case. This allows you to enter into a written agreement with your spouse without having to file a response and the benefit to that is you save money by not having to pay that filing fee.

If you want more information on that, stay on this channel and search for true default divorce in California or true default vs. hybrid and we’ve done a video on that as well and get more information about the benefits of that.

If you need assistance with your divorce, we can either begin and start to finish your case so we can pick up where you got stuck and left off. Let us know, that’s what we specialize in.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

For more information you can to the website or feel free to give me a call at 661-281-0266.

How To Fill Out California Divorce Motion Forms (RFO) Santa Clarita Divorce

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How To Fill Out California Divorce Motion Forms (RFO) Santa Clarita Divorce

Today we’re talking about how to file a divorce motion.

And this is generally for California but specifically for Los Angeles County. It may slightly very outside of the county of Los Angeles. So double check the court website or feel free to give us a call.

But we are talking about filling out a motion. This was called an order to show cost in the past it’s now called a request for order.

And this is form FL-300. This is a document that you’ll use or form rather that you’ll use to ask the court for some type of temporary order.

This could be for spousal support, child support, custody, visitation, basically anything you want to ask the court for to get an order form the court, you would file this type of motion.

Certain things to keep in mind, you have some time frame as far as services are concerned. I’ve done a video on that as well.

But today we’re specifically talking about the documents you need. You’re going to need form FL-300, that’s the form you’d file with the court to get a hearing.

If you’re request have anything to do with custody, visitation or children for that matter, you’re going to also need a mediation date, which you’re going to obtain from the court mediation office prior to filing your motion and getting your court date.

They will not give you a court date for your motion until you’d have that mediation date and time schedule.

The next thing you’ll need to do is an income expense declaration if your request has anything to do with money.

If it has anything to do with child support or spousal support or any financial purposes, you’re going to need to file an income expense. This is form FL-150.

Other things you’ll have to do, if you have motion regarding your children is take an online PACT class.

That is P A C T. Parents And Children Together, I believe.

And you can do that right online, it takes about an hour and you’ll need to do that before your mediation date.

Those are the forms you’d need. When you go to file before you serve your motion on your spouse, you need to get the court date and the mediation date if applicable before you serve your spouse.

You need to have the court date on there before you server your spouse.

We’ve been doing a lot of motions and I want to just get this video out there. We can help you, if you need to file a motion for any reason. We can help you get the court date, the mediation date, we can schedule your only PACT class. We can help you with all of that.

Just keep in mind that if it’s regarding spousal support or child support, you need an incoming expense, don’t forget that. You’ll also need to serve blank copies of exactly what you’re serving.

We can take care of this for you, if you need to file a motion, just keep in mind that any motion you file with the court is a temporary order until final judgment.

Just because you get a spousal support order or child support order in that hearing, you still need to incorporate that into the final order. Don’t make a mistake of thinking your case is finalized because you have an order from the court.

Any request for order motion is a temporary order until final judgment is entered in your case.

My name is Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

The number is 661-281-0266. Look forward to talking to you.

Two Reasons For Filing Legal Separation vs. Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce

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Two Reasons For Filing Legal Separation vs. Divorce | Santa Clarita DivorceTwo Reasons For Filing Legal Separation vs. Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce

Today we’re talking about the legal separation process a bit.

I’ve been getting a lot of calls about legal separation, so we’re doing a couple of videos about legal separation specifically.

I usually talk people out of filing for legal separation because I believe there’s only real two reasons you should be filing for legal separation.

One is religion and two is for medical concerns, if you do a legal separation, your spouse can remain on a health insurance in most cases.

I’ll tell you, those two reasons, there isn’t really a compelling reason why you should file for a legal separation as supposed to divorce unless you have some other personal reasons for doing so.

For instance, in another video, we spoke about the fact that filing for legal separation is no faster than filing for divorce because the courts are so busy.

I just wanted to cover that quickly, we do handle legal separation cases. If need more information on legal separation cases feel free to give me a call.

The legal separation process is exactly the same way as a divorce process is. In fact, it’s all the same paperwork and you’ll fill out all the same forms.

The only difference is you check the legal separation box as supposed to the dissolution box and the process is identical.

We can certainly help you if you want to go through a legal separation, we can also obviously help you with your divorce case but feel free to give us a call.

My name is Tim Blankenship. 661-281-0266 or divorce661.com for more information.

Filing For Legal Separation Is Not Faster Than Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Filing For Legal Separation Is Not Faster Than Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce

Today we are talking about the differences between legal separation and divorce as far as how fast or how slow it may take to get the process completed.

I’ve been getting a lot of calls for legal separation lately, and I generally talk people out of it for couple of reasons, but today we’re going to talk about the fact that people think that legal separation is faster to have processed than is a divorce.

I want to talk to you about the real world and what really is happening when it comes to legal separation.

In a divorce, you may have heard that there is a six month cooling off period. That means from the day your spouse has served, you can’t get the divorce finalized for at least six months and a day.

With legal separation that’s not the case, so some people may think, let me do a legal separation because that’s going to be faster.

That way we can divide everything up, maybe for particular financial reasons or tax purposes or what have you.

But I want to wan you against that and this is what I’ll tell you if you call me for legal separation.

Essentially, because the courts are so impacted right now, so busy, job losses, court closures, layoffs, etc. the legal separation process is going to take just as long as the divorce process and here’s why:

While you can get the legal process done immediately, there is no cooling off period like there is with divorce. The issue is they actually getting it processed through the courts.

In a perfect world, you’d be able to do your legal separation paperwork, take it down to court, have the judge sign it, there’s no cooling off period as long as the paperwork is correct, you can have your legal separation.

For that reason, it would be faster. However, in Los Angeles County, the process of getting your judgment approved is no faster for legal separation than it is for divorce.

What’s happening right now, because of court closures, the process of getting your judgment approved is taking anywhere from six to nine months.

If you factor that in for your reason for getting a legal separation and then you plan on maybe later divorcing. There’s really no reason to file for legal separation and then later divorce, because ultimately it’s not going to be any faster than the divorce process with the courts being so slow to approve the judgments in general. Whether it’ll be divorce or legal separation.

I hope that made sense. If you have any questions about legal separation, we’re going to be doing a few videos this week on that because we’ve been getting a lot of calls.

661-281-0266. My name is Tim Blankenship.

For more information you can go at divorce661.com.

Full Service Divorce Firm In Los Angeles

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Full Service Divorce Firm In Los Angeles

I want to comment on the fact that when you hire us, you are hiring a full service divorce legal service. We take care of everything and are a full service process.

What do I mean by that? When you hire us, we’ll take care of everything for from filing your paperwork with the court and preparing and serving all the forms.

When we mail out our documents to your spouse or to you where we need something signed, when you get it, you’re going to receive it with postage paid return envelope coming back to us.

I had a client that emailed me today and said “By the way Tim, when you mail out the forms to my husband, can you please put in an envelope with postage and I’d be willing to pay for it?”

And it made me laugh because I’m sure there are companies out there who charge on extra service like the postage and something like that.

Now with us, we charge a flat fee. That means that the fee you pay is the fee you’re going to pay. There’s not going to be any additional charges for postage or otherwise.

So I replied back to her email and said “look, you’ve hired a full service firm. Whenever we send something out by mail and we need something signed by you or your spouse or anyone and the courts as well, we always supply returned postage and envelope so we can get it back in the mail. That’s what full service means”.

If you have any questions about divorce and the divorce process or anyone who wants to work with a full service legal service, please give us a call.

My name is Tim Blankenship. You can reach me direct at 661-281-0266.

How To Get Judge To Terminate Child Support | Los Angeles Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How To Get Judge To Terminate Child Support | Los Angeles Divorce

Today I wanted to talk to you about an email that I’ve received over the weekend that was related to an Income Withholding Order.

This is in regards to a form called FL-195, and this form is used when there is an order for say, child support or spousal support, and it’s going to be submitted to the court in order for the judge to sign it.

And then that order, once signed, is normally served on your employer, and that’s what your employer uses to know how much child support or spousal support to withdraw from your check if you’re on the receiving end of that.

Now, this email specifically was in regards to cancelling or terminating the order for spousal support. This was a case where child support was ordered in the final judgment, and the child was turning 18 and we needed to get the termination of child support.

So here’s the issue: if there was a previously filed and ordered, you know judge signed an FL-195 and it’s with your employer, you have to go back to court. Your employer is most likely going to require that a new order be signed by the judge indicating that child support is being terminated.

This means that you have to go to court and file a motion to get the FL-195, or the termination of child support signed by the judge.

Now, this means you need to do some planning.

In this case, the last payment was going to be in the next 30 days but the employer needed the paperwork much sooner to make the change and the deduction. What most likely was going to happen is there is going to be support taken out beyond what the order should have been.

And this is because the person should’ve done this a little bit sooner because we need to now file a motion with the court to get the judge to sign the order. This is going to take probably 60 days before this happens.

Keep that in mind if you have a child support order that you need to terminate. It’s going to take some time, so plan ahead. At least 4-5 months in advance.

Again this is Tim Blankenship with SCV Legal Doc Assist. You can reach us at 661-281-0266 or on our website at divorce661.com.

How To Request Trial Setting Conference To Move Los Angeles Divorce Forward

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How To Request Trial Setting Conference To Move Los Angeles Divorce Forward

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

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 set in 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.

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.

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 set in 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.

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 setting conference for your divorce.

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