This is a follow up article to our discussion on how to terminate spousal support on long term marriages in California. That article spoke about how and if you can terminate spousal by agreement in your divorce.
This article will discuss how and if you can terminate spousal support when you have a long term marriage and you are filing your divorce by default.
By default, simply means that your spouse did not file a response.
The Court says that if you have a marriage over 10 years that jurisdiction for spousal support will be indefinite. We have filed many default divorce judgments in California and the filing party wanted to terminate spousal support despite it being a long term marriage.
At first we tried to submit default judgments per the clients request, knowing that it would get rejected by the court, but sometimes that is the only way you can prove your right.
When this happened, folks going through divorce were stuck having indefinite jurisdiction on spousal support with no other options.
But you do have one last option you can use if you really want to terminate the Courts jurisdiction on spousal support on your long term marriage in California.
There is a form called “Request For Default Setting” and is form FAM-031. This form is used when you have filed or are filing concurrently a Request To Enter Default.
If you look at the form, you will notice that you can set a default hearing if you are seeking to obtain a judgment based on the fact that you a requesting to terminate spousal support in a marriage over 10 years.
We have begun filing many of these Request For Default Settings lately because our clients don’t want to be stuck with indefinite jurisdiction over spousal support simply because their spouse did not respond.
We have not had any default hearings set yet, but we will report back when our clients begin to go to these hearings and let you now what the Court is asking in order to approve the termination of spousal support on a long term marriage default divorce judgments.
