Long Term California Divorce : How To Terminate Spousal Support
Hi, Tim Blankenship here at divorce661.com and this video is about when you’re trying to terminate spouse on a long term marriage. I’m going to try to make this brief but it can get quite complex.
You know long term is anything over 10 years. The rule of California is that the court will retain jurisdiction over the issue of spouse support indefinitely. So it means you guys can say no spouse support, 0 support order however, the court will maintain jurisdiction over that.
Meaning at any time during the future either one of you can go back to court and ask for spouse support if there’s a change in circumstance such as a child loss, etcetera. A lot of people don’t want to leave that door open even though policy is that the courts will maintain jurisdiction indefinitely.
A lot of our clients want to terminate jurisdiction over the issue of spouse support, even on long term marriages so they can close that door and never have that issue be revisited down the road. In doing so the parties have to agree to do that, both spouses have to agree.
In fact there’s a whole page waiver that says basically for no reason in the future, no matter what happens you’re waiving your right and the court no longer has jurisdiction, blah blah blah and you guys would both waive, both have to sign and initial that specific waiver language.
So when people call me and say Tim I tried to do my own divorce and my divorce is being rejected and they’re saying I can’t terminate spouse support and we have a long term marriage etcetera, what they’re trying to do is a default case. A default is where the other party, the respondent participate at all. So as, for court policy, the court has to reject your judgment.
They cannot go against California law and allow you to terminate support on long term marriages except by agreement. So we got, many people come to us say Tim, we’re having this problem. We tried to return our judgment, they’re rejecting it because they say we can’t waive it even though I marked terminate jurisdiction on the petition and that’s because they’re trying to do a true default versus a hybrid.
A hybrid is a case where, and what’s going on here is people are trying to save on court fees and it’s the same thing we do, but what you want to do is a hybrid which is a default with an agreement, as opposed to a true default. Both of those neither party has to, I’m sorry, the respondent doesn’t have to response, so the same court fee savings is there but people get confused between a default and default with agreements.
If you’re trying to terminate spouse, long term marriage and you guys sign the waiver language then you need to have the other party involved still don’t have to file a response, but then you can terminate support on a long term marriage.
If you have no choice but to do it by default and they’re option is going to be mark the reserved jurisdiction over the spouse support on your spouse support order for judgment. Tim Blankenship divorce661.com. Hope this was helpful.
If you want to schedule a call with me you can go to divorce661.com and you can do that through the blue button that says schedule a call with Tim, and if you need my assistance feel free to set that up and we hope to talk to you about helping you prepare or finish your divorce in California.
Thank you so much for watching and have a great day.
