No Spousal Support But Did You Terminate The Court’s Jurisdiction?
Hi, Tim Blankenship here with divorce661.com and this video is about long term, when you’re trying to terminate spouse support on a long term marriage, so I’m going to try and make this brief because it can get quite complex.
In a long term marriage, anything over 10 years, the rule of California is that the court will retain jurisdiction over the issue of spousal support indefinitely, so it means you guys can say no spouse support, zero support order, however the courts will maintain jurisdiction over that, meaning at any time in the future either one of you could go back to court and ask for spouse support if there is a change in circumstances such as a job 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 to have that issue of being revisited down the road.
In doing so the parties have to agree to do that, both spouses have to agree. In fact, there is 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 are 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 that I can’t terminate spouse support and we had a long term marriage, etcetera, what they are trying to do is a default case. A default is where the other party, the respondent, doesn’t participate at all. So, for a court policy, the courts have 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’ve had many people come to us and say Tim, we’re having this problem, we tried to turn our judgment, they’re rejecting 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 that’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 true default.
Both of those, neither party has to, I’m sorry the respondent doesn’t have to file a response so, you’re the same court fee savings is there but people get confused between a default and a default with agreement. So, if you’re trying to terminate spouse support on a long term marriage and you guys are signing a 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’re going, if you have no choice but to do it by default then your only option is going to be mark the reserved jurisdiction over the issue of spouse support on your spouse support order for your 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 I’d be happy to talk to you about helping you.
