California Divorce | How To Speed Up The Divorce Process

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Many of our clients want us to get their divorce process as quickly as possible.  And I know a lot of people that listen to my podcasts and videos are trying to do their own divorce.

So we often are giving quick tips on how you can do that.  So while there is an information sheet from the courts, on how to process your paperwork is filed, as far as filing the petition serving your spouse doing the disclosures and filing your judgment.

This is a quick tip to help your divorce  get processed by the court faster.  Once you File your petition and have it served and you start the clock on the six-month process all you have to do is wait 30 days after the divorce has been served and then you can turn in all the final paperwork all at the same time, the proof of service the judgment and everything that goes along with the marital settlement agreement and a single shot.

Instead of filing each form separately, if you do it all at once, all after the thirty days have passed the court clerk can process your divorce judgment, that much faster.

We Can Handle Your Divorce Case Anywhere In California

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We are often asked how we are able to handle divorce cases throughout California. And there are a couple of reasons. Mainly, the main reason is that in California the divorce process is almost nearly identical across all counties in California.

It’s the same petition, the same summons, the same response, it’s the exact same process, especially from an amicable Viewpoint, you know, going to trial. And that process is going to be a little bit different with each of the courts, but the actual amicable divorce process is nearly identical. The forms are identical, some courts may have one or two different, local forms for their particular County, but other than that, the process of divorce is identical.

The other reason is we handle our service completely remote. There’s no reason to come to our office. Everything is signed electronically in most cases. So there’s no office appointment. So, that’s another reason we’re able to handle your divorce anywhere in California.

California Divorce Process Explained In 1 Minute

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Tim Blankenship here with Divorce661.com., and what I’m going to attempt to do is explain the divorce process in under one minute.

So this is the divorce process. One party will decide to file their petition.  They will then serve the petition on the other party. The respondent will then file a response to the petition and that can be done whether you’re an agreement or not.

Next step is to complete your financial disclosures.  This is a mandatory step for you both to list out what all assets and debts are on the table for Division or however you want to divide things up then your settlement agreement is drafted based on the terms of your agreement.

Now, that’s how it will go. If you guys are amicable, if you guys don’t agree on even a single issue, that’s when you will actually enter the court system and you’re basically asking the judge to make a decision through a trial.

Tim Blankenship, Divorce661.com, give us a call If you need assistance with your amicable divorce anywhere in California.

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We’ve Been Separated For 10 Years – Can You Handle Our California Divorce?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Tim Blankenship here with Divorce661.com and the question we had to answer today was someone has been separated from their spouse for 10 years and they’re asking if we can help and that is not an issue.

Generally, if you haven’t seen your spouse in 5 10, 20, 50 years that does not matter as long as you know where they live.

And again as always because we handle only amicable divorce has so long as you guys are cooperative and we’ll sign off on the documents.

So just because there is a long lapse Of a separation time frame that makes no difference whatsoever. As long as you’ll both be cooperative as well.

As you know, that you guys probably don’t have any community property anymore. Everything is going to be a little bit more straightforward.

You probably don’t need alimony, there’s probably no assets or debts to divide, so it makes for a pretty streamlined process.

So give us a call. If you find yourself in this situation, Tim Blankenship, Divorce661.com, I hope you’re having a great day. We’ll talk to you soon.

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We Can Take Over Your Existing California Divorce Case

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Tim Blankenship here with Divorce661.com. And recently, we received an email from a potential client Who’s asking if we can take over their divorce case, they had used a mediator for their amicable divorce, help them come to an agreement and do the filings.

However they’re having trouble getting a hold of their mediator and asked if we can take over and the answer is yes. Whether you’re using another service a mediator and attorney or tried to do it yourself. We can take over your divorce case anywhere in California at any point if you get stuck from the very beginning to somewhere in the middle or if you submitted your judgment and it got rejected, you can call us, we can bail you out, take over and fix everything and get it submitted on your behalf.

Give us a call at 661-281-0226 or you can schedule a consultation at Divorce661.com where you can also get started with our service right there through our website. All right, we’ll talk to you soon. You have a great day.

Issues To Consider When Remarried But Never Divorced

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Tim Blankenship here with Divorce661.com and what we’re talking in this video is what happens if you are married and find out that your divorce was never finalized. And this happens more than you would think. And I want to go over a couple of things that might come to mind, some considerations that might worry you and kind of put that to rest.

So number one, if you’ve gotten remarried and then later find out your divorce was never finalized, that does not void your marriage, your new marriage is still valid. What it does though, It does give your spouse the opportunity to file to have the marriage voided,if they decided to, but you know, that’s something they would have to consider doing.

We’ve never seen that happen. But that does not happen automatically. There would have to be a new legal action taken. So your new marriage is not void. We just need to finalize your divorce. The other thing that comes up is, does that extend the actual length off your marriage If your divorce is not finalized? And the answer is no.

When you filed the petition, you indicated a data separation and that date of separation will remain even if you didn’t finish your divorce for 20 years, so you do not continue, although you are technically married on paper, it does not accrue as far as the length of your married is. As far as the length of your marriage, as far as community property division goes, that separation is going to stand even if you have waited now twenty years later.

And because the time does not increase on your length of marriage, this doesn’t impact things such as Social Security or division of community property. Or if you’ve accrued a pension over the last 20 years, that dat of separation really is that line in the sand. So when this happens and again, it happens quite a bit and you find yourself still married, even though you’ve been remarried just give us a call.

We can finalize your divorce, assuming your case is still open. If it’s not, we just file a new case, it’s really not a big deal. Tim Blankenship, Divorce661.com.Hope you’re having a great day. Talk to you soon.

LA County Family Law Now Allowing Judgments To Be E-Filed

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Tim Blankenship here with Divorce661.com. And what we’re talking about today is Los Angeles County family law finally got their act together and now allow for judgments to be e-filed. This is a game-changer. We’ve been doing this for 10 years and this really is a game changer as far as the speed we will be able to deliver our service.

We have always been on the cutting edge of technology with our my-case portal, electronic signatures, but the courts have always been behind the times. And we’re very thankful that LA county is now allowing for electronic signatures.

About six months ago they started allowing us to e-file the petition, which also was a game changer because before that, we had to have an attorney service walk them in, they would sit there, take a couple days to get filed and then we’d get them back. But now with the e-file of the petitions, we are able to get a confirmation that has been received. It still takes a day or so to get back. But at least we get that confirmation that they have it.

Same now goes with the Judgment now that we can submit the Judgment electronically, we can give our clients a confirmation that their judgment has, in fact, been submitted. Before, we had to package it up, make four or five copies, create all the envelopes and submit it to the court, but they would not provide us any type of confirmation because unlike the petition or other documents you file, where it goes to the clerk and they stamp it and give you a copy.

That doesn’t happen with the Judgment. When we submit the Judgment it has to be submitted to the Judgment clerk who then has to open up your file and then they process your judgment once they get to it, and that can be in one, two, three or four months lately has been the delay. At least now, we have a confirmation.

Once we submit it we’ll get email confirmation that it’s been submitted and we can get that over to our client so they know their judgment has, in fact, been submitted. Now, I don’t suspect that the Judgment processing timeline will be any better. But at least once it is processed, we will then get a confirmation that it’s been approved an email of the conformed judgment.

So this really is a game changer. If you’re using our service, everything now is done entirely electronic at least for a Los Angeles County is concerned. From petition to judgment, everything is signed through our portal. You can even upload now to our portal your signed and notarized judgment page. No longer do you have to mail those into our office?

So, again, this really is a game changer. And after doing this for 10 years, we’re really glad that technology is catching up with us.

Tim Blankenship, Divorce661.com, I hope you’re having a great day. We’ll talk to you soon.

Options On Serving California Divorce Summons When Spouse Out Of State

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Hi, Tim Blankenship here with Divorce661.com. And I what I want to talk about today is the two different ways you can serve your spouse If they live out of state.

If you notice on the FL-115,this is the proof of service of summons. So we’re talking about serving the initial documents once you establish a case for the court in California. One of the options is what’s called a mail and acknowledgement service and specifically doing a registered or certified mail with return receipt requested.

This is on page 2 of the 115.So if you and your spouse are amicable and you do have a spouse out of state, you can, when they say you, someone else has to do it. Someone has always has someone else always has to serve the summons and petition and you can do that by mail. You can do that by mail within California using a notice of acknowledgement form 117.

But when you are serving a document out of state and you’ll still use the 117,you need to do it by certified mail and you need to do it with return receipt so you have evidence that it was delivered and signed for by your spouse or just slightly different when the other party lives out of state.

Now, let’s assume that your spouse is not amicable. Now with our clients that’s not the case because we only work with amicable clients, so this is never an issue. But that said if they refuse to sign or maybe they’ve moved and they no longer are at that address that you don’t know where they live. The next option is simply going to be doing it by personal service which is the standard normally.

If you don’t know where they live, my recommendation is you contact a process server company in that state and find one that is also a private detective of sorts that can do some type of background search and they can do a search and maybe find where they are listing their credit cards, or maybe they did a lease application or something like that because they do have to be served for the 6 months to start.

So if you filed for divorce, you know, two months ago, but you still haven’t been able to get them served your six months has not started yet. That six-month cooling-off period. So get a private detective service who’s also a process server. There are many of them out there. You can use a service like napps.org, it’s basically a site where you can enter a zip code or an area of where the other party lives and locate a Iicensed process server anywhere in the country.

Tim Blankenship Divorce661.com. I hope you’re having a great day. We’ll talk to you soon.

YOU Are The ONLY Reason We Can’t Finalize Your Divorce Case

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YOU are the only reason we can’t finalize your divorce case.

What do I mean by this statement? I mean that we can handle any amount of complexity of cases related to assets and debts, children, child support and spousal support. There is nothing that can stop us from finalizing your divorce case, except you or your spouse.

We’ve helped clients with 8 children. We’ve helped clients with 10 homes. We’ve helped clients with millions in assets.

That is not an issue for us.

What is an issue for us is when clients hire us and then fall out of agreement or no longer are amicable and stop cooperating with the process.

That is the only thing that can stop us from being able to finalize your divorce.

And here is why.

We only work with 100% amicable spouses who will ultimately come up with an agreement. We will put you through the divorce process, complete and file all the paperwork with the courts. We will do it all.

However, if you and your spouse at some point fall out of agreement or decide no longer to cooperate, that stops us from being able to finalize your divorce case.

Why?

Because in order for us to finalize your divorce case you both have to sign the Marital Settlement Agreement that outlines all the terms and agreement related to your divorce.

So even if we prepare everything as you provided and agreed to, even if one party simply decides they are not going to sign it at the very end, this stops us from being able to submit it to court. This is because even though we’ve drafted the agreement, it is not an agreement if not signed by both spouses.

Which Party Should File The Divorce Judgment Modification?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When you go through a divorce in California and finalize your judgment, there may be a time when you want to make changes to the original agreement.

When this happens you need to file what’s called a “Modification” or “Stipulation”. This would be in the form of signing a stipulation (agreement) to modify (change) some of the terms of your prior judgment or Marital Settlement Agreement.

What we are specifically talking about here, however is who should be the party to file the stipulation to modify the judgment?

That really depends on what type of divorce case you had.

We utilize a process called, “default with written agreement”. This simply means that the respondent did not sign a formal response. We do this to save our clients money.

That said, and because the respondent never paid a filing fee, if you file the stipulation to modify the judgment under the respondent’s name who did not pay the filing fee, the court will want the full, what they call “First Appearance Fee”, which is currently $435.

However, if you file in the name of the petitioner who has already paid their First Appearance Fee, then the cost to file the stipulation to modify the judgment is only $20 currently.