Will Divorce Court Approve Our California Divorce?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Will Divorce Court Approve Our California Divorce?

This is a question I get everyday. Will the divorce court approve our California divorce. In fact I get this stated two different ways. The first way is where people ask whether or not the judge will approve their divorce agreement if they don’t divide the assets and debts evenly.  The other way people ask is by saying they will just wait to hear what the judge has to say.

(We are a full service divorce firm serving all of California. Call us for help with your divorce anywhere in California)

What you should know is that if you enter into a written agreement for your divorce the court is not going to review your divorce agreement to look to see if it is a fair agreement. The court assumes that since you both agreed to the terms of your divorce and signed the marital settlement agreement or judgment that you obviously agree to it’s terms.

Therefore, the court is not going to interfere with what you and your spouse have agreed to. In fact, they are not even looking at the division of assets or debts at all. All they are making sure of is that the paperwork was prepared correctly and that all the procedural steps were followed.

A lot of people are not aware of this. They think that because California is a community property State and because California law states that all assets and debts are to be divided 50/50 that if they submit an agreement where the assets and debts are not divided 50/50 that the court may not approve it.

That is not the case. Case in point, when we submit your judgment to the court which entails all your agreements related to community property, all we are providing them with is a list of account numbers. We do not provide any values at all. So even if the court was to look at what each of you are keeping, they have no idea what the values of each of the accounts are.

This goes for the other way we are told, whereby people want say they want to see what the judge says. The only way a judge is ever going to make a decision for you is if you ask them to. And the only way to ask a judge to make a decision for you is by going to trial.

A trial is where the court decides what is fair, not you. So with our amicable divorce cases that we handle, you would not be going to court therefore the judge would not be making the decisions, you and your spouse will be.

The short story is that if your California divorce in amicable, you won’t have to go to court and you get to make all the agreements and it does not matter if the division of your assets and debts you have agreed upon are equal or not.

Getting Divorced But Still Living Together : California Divorce : Divorce661

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Getting Divorced But Still Living Together : California Divorce : Divorce661

Many of our clients are getting divorced and are still living together. When people call about our services and tell me this, sometimes they think that they cannot still be living together to get divorced or that their situation is different because they have not actually, physically separated yet.

First of all, there is no requirement in California that you be physically separated for any period of time prior to filing for divorce, like some States.

So when you go to file for divorce and are still living together, the question becomes, what date of separation do you use if you are still living together.

When people are still living together and getting a divorce and I ask them what their date of separation is, they usually say “there isn’t one” or “we are not separated, we are still living together”.

So in these cases, what date of separation should you use when filing your divorce Petition. Because you will have to have a date of separation listed on the Petition when you go to file your California divorce case.

If you are getting a divorce but still living together you can use one of a few different dates of separation.

First, you could use a date in the past that perhaps you and your spouse discussed getting a divorce. Maybe you had a big sit down and discussion and talked out the details of your divorce or simply talked and the two of you agreed it would be best to get a divorce. You could use this date if this is the case.

Second, maybe there was a change in your living situation. Let’s say one of you started living in the spare bedroom or perhaps started sleeping on the couch or even started staying at a friends house a few days a week. This would certainly show that something is going on and perhaps a date surrounding what led up to changing your sleeping arrangement would be an appropriate date of separation.

Third, if you have no other date in mind, and this is what we do most of the time, is we simply use the date of the filing of the divorce petition as the date of separation.

Again, you need to have a date of separation listed on the divorce petition. So while you are not physically separated, you would at least use the date of filing or signing of the petition as the date of separation.

Route 66 Classic Grill in Canyon Country Bike Night June 7, 2017

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Wednesday, June 7, 2017 Route 66 Classic Grill in Canyon Country is hosting their Bike Night. The first of what appears to be many Wednesdays where they will host this event or others like it begins June 7, 2017 from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m.

Touted as SoCal’s largest weekly bike night, right here in Santa Clarita, they have live music, raffle prizes, BBQ and special drinks.

Route 66 is located at 18730 Soledad Canyon Road, Canyon Country, CA 91351 and their phone number is 661-298-1494.

Personally, I have never been, but it does look fun.  They actually have a ton of events going on at Route 66. You can learn more about their upcoming events right on their website at http://route66classicgrill.com/

Santa Clarita Summer Beach Bus Service 2017 Begins June 3rd

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Summer Beach Bus Service Starts June 3

Santa Clarita Transit brings back its annual Beach Bus to Santa Monica

I have never taken the bus to the beach from Santa Clarita, but it does seem like a fun idea. Hard to believe that for only $3 each way or just $6 round trip can get you down to the Santa Monica pier.

No driving the 405, no looking for parking, no paying $15 to park near the beach sounds good to me. And you can bring coolers, beach toys and even surfboards. Where do they put all that?

Anyways, has anyone ever used the Santa Clarita Summer Beach Bus service? Wondering if it is a nice ride or cramped with crying, hungry kids.

Below is from the City of Santa Clarita’s website.

Beginning Saturday, June 3, 2017, residents can board Santa Clarita Transit’s Summer Beach Bus to travel to Santa Monica on Saturdays and Sundays. Santa Clarita Transit is excited to once again offer the popular service which allows residents to ride to the beach with ease on one of the City’s comfortable, air-conditioned commuter express buses. The Summer Beach Bus runs through Sunday, September 3.

Summer Beach Bus fares are $3.00 each way for children and adults and $1.50 each way for Senior Citizens and persons with disabilities. Riders may pay using stored value on their TAP card or in exact cash; monthly passes will not be accepted.

Buses will depart at approximately 8:40 a.m. and return at 4:30 p.m., ensuring a full day of beach activities without the stress of freeway driving and finding parking.

Two bus routes will depart on each Saturday and Sunday from various stops in Santa Clarita and take residents to the Santa Monica Pier. Shuttle departure stops include Canyon Country Park, Soledad Canyon Road and Solamint Drive, Soledad Canyon Road and Shangri-La Drive, Via Princessa Metrolink Station, McBean Regional Transit Center, Railroad Avenue and 15th Street, Newhall Metrolink Station, Newhall Avenue and Valle Del Oro, and Newhall Avenue and Sierra Highway.

Travelers may bring their beach chairs, coolers and surfboards.

Thanks Santa Clarita for putting together a way to get down to the beach affordably and safely. For more information you can visit the Santa Clarita Website Here.

California Annulment of Marriage Rules : Can You File For An Annulment?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

California Annulment of Marriage Rules : Can You File For An Annulment?

Today we are talking about Annulments in California also known as Nullity of a marriage in California. We get calls asking about the process for annulments pretty often. However, there is a big myth when it comes to the rules and guidelines one must meet in order to qualify for an annulment.

Length Of Marriage Does Not Matter With California Annulments or Nullities

The biggest myth, or should I say the only myth when it comes to annulments in California is that of the duration of the marriage. Many people believe that they can get an annulment if they were married for a very short time.

This is a myth about annulments that we get from T.V. I can think of one movie in particular, The Hangover, where Doug get’s married and does not remember because they had taken drugs. The next morning they go back to the wedding chapel and ask if they do annulments because they got married last night. ( I will come back to this, because it brings up an actual reason for a nullity)

6 Ways To Qualify For A Nullity of Marriage in California

There are only 6 reasons that you can qualify to have your marriage annulled

There are only 6 reasons you can claim to ask the court to annul your marriage. We are going to be talking about nullity based upon a Voidable Marriage. You see, that is what is happening with a nullity is that you are nullifying or voiding the marriage based on one of 6 reasons.

  1. Petitioner’s age at time of registration of domestic partnership or marriage – the party filing for the annulment was under 18 years old at the time of the marriage or domestic partnership.
  2. Prior existing marriage or domestic partnership – Either party was already legally married or in a registered domestic partnership. This is different from bigamy (which is automatically illegal) because, in this case, the marriage or domestic partnership took place after the former spouse or domestic partner was absent for 5 years and not known to be living or generally thought to be dead.
  3. Unsound Mind – either party was of “unsound mind” or unable to understand the nature of the marriage or domestic partnership, including the obligations that come with it.
  4. Fraud – Either party got married or registered the domestic partnership as a result of fraud. The fraud must have been about something vital to the relationship that directly affected why the party who was deceived agreed to the marriage or domestic partnership. Some examples are marrying only to get a green card or hiding the inability to have children.
  5. Force – either party consented to getting married or filing a domestic partnership as a result of force.
  6. Physical Incapacity – the parties got married or registered a domestic partnership while 1 of them was “physically incapacitated” (basically, it means that 1 of the spouses or partners was physically incapable of “consummating” the relationship) and the incapacity continues and appears to be “incurable.”

So as you can see, the reasons to qualify for a nullity are pretty stiff and time or duration of the marriage is not one of them. In all my time I have completed thousands of divorce cases, and only 3 nullities. Two of them were for prior existing marriages. Meaning, when they got married, one of them was still currently married.

These types of cases are pretty easy to prove. They were previously married and cannot provide proof of a valid divorce and then go remarried. In this case the parties agreed to nullify the marriage.

In the other case of nullity that I handled, the parties got married after a week of drinking and doing drugs and neither party realized what they had done. This was a case where the nullity of their marriage was approved by the court.

Nullities must be approved/ ordered by the court

When you file for a nullity of your marriage, the process is much different than with divorce. You see, with a divorce, you do not have to have a reason and it is just called irreconcilable differences. With nullity you need to prove one of the 6 reasons to the court and they have to agree with your rationale.

Procedurally, this means that on top of filing for a nullity, you also have to file a Request For Order and have a hearing set for the court to hear your evidence as to why a nullity should be granted.

Now back to my example about the movie The Hangover. While they could not get a nullity based on the short term duration of the marriage (at least not in California – Perhaps in Las Vegas), they could try based upon “unsound mind”.

Personally, I think that it should be easy to nullify your marriage in California. People do make mistakes. In fact, I got a call last week and the wife was asking about nullities and I had to break the above news to her. They had only been married for 4 days and both the husband and wife realized that it was a mistake.

Unfortunately, this will just have to be one of life’s learning lessons and will simply have to get divorced. The only real issues is that these people were very young, in their early twenties, and from now on, whenever asked, will have to indicate they are divorced instead of single.

That is until they get married again.

 

 

 

 

Notarize Santa Clarita Divorce Papers Required?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Notarize Santa Clarita Divorce Papers Required?

Do you need to have your Santa Clarita divorce papers notarized? This is a question I get a lot. In the past I provided the different reasons of when you would need to notarize certain divorce papers and when you didn’t.

For instance, In an uncontested case, you do not normally need to have your final judgment papers notarized. But some of the courts over the last few years have modified this and put in their own rules.

For instance, one court, even with uncontested divorce cases, that where a petition and a response was file in the divorce case one court in Los Angeles County began requiring both signatures to be notarized on uncontested divorce cases when it was a marriage of long duration (over 10 years) and they were asking the court to terminate the jurisdiction over the issue of spousal support.

In another case, a default with agreement (where no response is filed, but the parties enter into a written agreement) normally only the Respondent, who did not file a Response needs to have their signature notarized.

So you can see it can be very confusing on when and when you don’t need to have your signature notarized on your divorce judgment. So instead of trying to explain this to everyone and to make things simpler we simply ask all our Santa Clarita Divorce clients to notarize their signatures on the divorce judgment in all cases.

We are a full service paralegal divorce firm in Santa Clarita. We handle divorce cases throughout California. If you need assistance with your divorce, are stuck in the paperwork or are just getting started with your divorce, give us a call. We  can help.

FL-180 : The Court Acquired Jurisdiction Of The Respondent On

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

FL-180 : The Court Acquired Jurisdiction Of The Respondent On

This article explains what date you should put on the FL-180 on number 3 where it says, The Court acquired jurisdiction of the Respondent on (Date)

So we know the court is looking for a date, but what date?

You can see that there are 2 options. Either the date the respondent was served or the date the respondent appeared.

You can use either date, the date of service or the date the respondent appeared. The date the respondent was served is pretty clear. Whether they were served personally, or by having them sign a notice and acknowledgment of receipt, you will use either the date they were personally served or the date they signed the FL-117.

But what are they talking about as far as, “The date the respondent appeared”?  The date the respondent appeared is the date the respondent filed their response. That is their “appearance”.

It really does not matter which date you use. We generally will use the date of service because that is usually a sooner date as the Respondent is usually served before they file the response. However, when there is a Response filed to the divorce case we do tend to use the date of the response or appearance to show the court that this is an uncontested divorce.

Santa Clarita Divorce : STRS & PERS Pensions Must Be Listed On Judgment

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Santa Clarita Divorce : STRS & PERS Pensions Must Be Listed On Judgment

Whenever you are going through a divorce in California, part of the process is first disclosing your assets and debts which will ultimately end up on a judgment or marital settlement agreement.

What a lot of people think is that when an asset is in their name only, that it does not count or does not need to be listed. This happens a lot of times when people call me and say they have no assets or debts “together”. What they are saying is that they do have assets and debts, but that they are only in each of their names, and not together.

(Watch video or continue reading below)

But what they are not aware of is how California’s community property laws work. Essentially, community property is anything that was acquired during the marriage (with some exceptions). What this means in plain English is that it does not matter in whose name an asset or debt is in, it depends on when it was accrued.

So speaking of pensions and STRS and PERS specifically, this is where people say they have no assets to divide, but then later i find out they have pensions. When I ask why they didn’t state this, they say, “we’ll it’s only in my name”. You can see how this is not correct.

Here is a few issues. First, you may think you don’t have to disclose a particular asset because it is in your name only. That is not how it works. When you do your disclosure, you are listing all assets and debts, community and separate.

Second, if you don’t list your assets and debts on your judgment or marital settlement agreement, then you have no court order stating who is keeping that particular asset or debt and leave yourself exposed for future issues.

Third, is specific to STRS and PERS. We had a client who forgot to list his STRS pension on his disclosures and therefore it did not end up on his judgment. When he went to call STRS (State Teacher’s Retirement System) they said that his STRS pension was not listed on the judgment. The issue this caused is that they required language in the judgment that addressed his STRS pension. Specifically, they needed the judgment to say he was being awarded 100%. Otherwise, they were not going to be able to disburse his pension upon retirement and would not allow him to change beneficiaries. You can see how this is problematic.

This was all fixed by us filing a stipulation stating he was awarded his STRS pension, but this is an issue that could have been avoided.

The short story is that if you have assets and debts, no matter in whose name, you should disclose and those assets and debts need to be confirmed to one party or the other. This will keep you safe and help avoid problems down the road.

Birthday’s & Graduation Today

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Today will be a fun and exciting day, of not exhausting. I have already been up since 4 a.m. and I am taking the day off to spend with my family.

Our 2nd born, Justin, graduates from Valencia High School today. So being that we do everything last minute, we are up early to take care of all the pre celebratory things one must accomplish. Everything from picking up the cake we ordered to getting balloons.

I also have to pick up the motorhome from storage. Why you ask? Because it is the ultimate mother and law quarters. No, not kidding and not trying to be mean. We have some family coming in and the motorhome is a perfect, private place for company to stay.

I mean, if it gets too loud in the house tonight ( son having some friends over) my wife and I might decide to stay in the RV.

Today is also my wife’s birthday. I think she is going to get cheated, what with it being my son’s day of graduation. I am going to take her to breakfast and then we are also going to lunch for my son’s graduation, but I think she knows that today will be more about him than her.

I don’t think she will mind. Our daughter came home from UCLA last night and will also be spending the weekend with us, so pretty sure she is a happy mommy.

We’ll it’s going on 5:30 and the birds are chirping and there is just enough light to be able to see outside. Time to get going as I am “burning daylight” as my dad used to say.

Have a nice Memorial Day weekend and be safe!

Original Signatures Required On Santa Clarita Divorce Forms?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Original Signatures Required On Santa Clarita Divorce Forms?

Do you need original signatures on your divorce paperwork? For the most part the answer is yes. However there are many forms where you can file a fax or scan signature.

The reason this is important to know is that many times you can file your paperwork with a scan or just a fax of your signature. Now, if you are doing your own divorce, likely this is not an issues as when you go to file your divorce paperwork with the court, you will be walking in your paperwork, so you will likely have original signatures. (keep reading below video)

However, the folks that use our Santa Clarita divorce service it is important to know that you don’t need original signatures on certain divorce documents.

Here is how it works when you use our Santa Clarita Divorce service. When you get started with us, we don’t need original signatures on the Petition, Summons (no signature on that form anyways), UCCJEA – FL-105 or the Family Law Case Cover Sheet form FAM-020.

The reason I have gone to the trouble to explain this is that if you are using our full service divorce we can get your Santa Clarita divorce started via email or fax. When folks hire us we get started immediately and send out the initial court documents for signature. We ask that you simply fax or scan these documents back to us so we can file with the court.

Yes, we can file these initial court documents with the court with just a fax of scan signature. This allows us to get started with your divorce case without delay.

The other forms that the court will accept with a fax or scanned signature are the financial disclosures which are the following forms FL-141 and the FL-150.

When it comes time to submit your divorce judgment forms, you will need original signatures on all of those documents.