Don’t Get Duped During California Divorce

We are a Licensed and Bonded Legal Document Preparation Firm. We specialize in Divorce but mostly we handle Amicable Divorces.

We don’t see really complex cases where parties are fighting or they’re going to court or people hiding assets you know that really nasty Divorce you hear on TV or heard on Divorce Court.

That’s not the type of Divorce cases we handle. But we do handle a large volume of amicable style, a friendly divorce cases for the most part because you’re going through a Divorce.

But today I got a phone call and it just bugged me. A lady called. She had gone through or in fact she had done a legal separation with her spouse.

She was a stay at home mom for years. They were married for 30 plus years. And she said, “I filled out some paperwork. My husband did file for legal separation. I signed some documents and I am just wondering you know if it’s completed or what the status of the case is.”

So the short story is it appears from this conversation with the spouse that she had no idea that in going through the legal separation process that they had distributed all the assets and debts.

And she had no idea what was given to her, what she signed or not signed.

And so when we’re going through this she already started crying not realizing she had no idea what she had signed as far as assets and debts as part of the distribution, custody and visitation.

All she knows is she has trusted her spouse to do the right thing. And he may have but she doesn’t know what she signed.

She doesn’t remember asking for any assets and debts or what she has provided or what she’s getting in this legal separation which has no different than Divorce, all the assets and debts need to be divided.

And the issue here was the husband had significant assets per what she said. We didn’t go over any detail but there were significant assets, significant income.

And he had done always he took care of the loans throughout the marriage, he took care of paying the bills, he took care of all the finances and she was a stay at home mom and all was well and that worked for them.

But if that’s the case what happened now? She was crying by the time we were done because I discussed with her the fact that whether you signed or not your case is done, your assets have been divided and she had no idea what she was given in the separation or divorce.

And all I could say was either it sounds like your spouse kind of duped you and got you to sign some documents that may have been your best interest especially if when you weren’t told what they were.

So all I could tell her is you know you need to go to an attorney.

Take your judgment and have him look at it and see what happened because you may have to set aside and this could be the beginning of your long drawn out process.

The conclusion with this is, if your spouse that was not involved in the finances, not familiar with what is going on financial with the household and you’re going through a Divorce like I told this lady, “You need to wake up. This is not a time to trust your spouse.”

Of course, I say that knowing that we handle amicable divorce cases but in cases where your spouse is trying to take advantage of you, you’re going to have to pay attention and you’ll get representation or get assistance with your case, because this lady is legally separated and had no idea that her property was divided, that there are custody orders in place because she just trusted her spouse, signed where he said to sign.

And she might be okay, the chances are this is going to be something where she doesn’t realized she really messed herself up after this long term marriage.

I just want to get that off my chest. Nothing too information there or informative like I normally do with forms and so forth but I just want to share that with folks.

If you’re one of those spouses either give us a call or contact an attorney if you don’t feel something is right with the process of Divorce or legal separation.