My First Spartan Race – Mud, Rain, Wind and Cold

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Yesterday, on January 31, 2016, I took my family down to Vail Lake in Temecula for our first family Spartan Race.  I had signed up myself and my 2 kids for this race about a month ago or so. ( my wife is a Yogi and not into these types of things)

A few days before the Spartan race, I could see on the weather app on my phone that it was showing 100% chance of rain and for the temperature to drop about 20 degrees.  Turns out the weather man was right.  And it was strange that the day before and the day after (today) are totally clear.

Anyway, it turned out to be the coldest, muddiest, windiest, rainy day you could have.  It was about 50 degrees out and pouring rain.  The wind was blowing so hard through the canyons that rain was horizontal.  The combination made for very uncomfortable conditions.

They say a picture says a thousand words.  Here is the before and after photos.

Before
Before
After
After

Per the Spartan website, the race was to be between 3 and 5 miles and with 25 or so obstacles. While on the course, we spoke to a few people who have done spartan races in the past and I guess the joke is that the mileage is always over 5 miles for the Sprint and that they just try to get new people by saying it is 3 miles.  Got me!

What made the course so hard is the rain which then turned the dirt to mud.  I think I spent as much time sliding down the hills as I did trying to claw myself up on all fours.

Here is a picture of my son on the rings and you can see the mud is just crazy.

spartan_mud

The short story is that I did not train enough for this race.  I am so sore this morning while i write this, it is crazy.  I know I will be more sore tomorrow most likely and should have worn a long sleeve shirt to work because I have so many scratches and bruises on my arms it looks terrible.

I am just glad that my kids did not have a bad attitude about the experience. Even though they were freezing and shivering for almost 3 hours, they said they would do it again.  I just kept telling them while we were on the course that this build character and most likely we will never have to experience these extreme conditions again.

Well, one could hope.

Tim

Bifurcate Divorce: What Is A Bifurcation? California Divorce Tutor

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

What is a bifurcation of your divorce?

A bifurcation is a fancy word that means “to separate”. For purposes of bifurcating your divorce, this is usually referring to separating the marriage portion of your divorce from everything else such as the asset and debt division or children, custody, support, etc.

In short, a bifurcation would allow the parties to get divorced, while leaving all the other issues left over to decide. It is pretty common for divorcees to want to bifurcate the status of their marriage (meaning to go from married to single) when the divorce case is taking to long or there are other reason why one of the parties wants to end the status of their marriage sooner than the entire divorce case being finished.

(Read more below video)

Completing a bifurcation during your divorce can be achieved by agreement of the parties, which is the easiest way to do it. If your spouse does not agree to stipulate to a bifurcation, you can always file a motion with the court, called a “Request for Order”, and have a judge make a ruling on the matter. But by agreement is always easier.

Valencia Divorce : Choose Your Process Server Wisely

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When going through a divorce in Valencia, California, one of the things you will have to eventually do is serve your spouse the divorce papers.  There are several ways to do this, but in this article, we are talking about personally serving the divorce papers.

Your options for serving divorce papers are pretty wide, meaning it can be anyone over the age of 18, who is not a party to the case.  So that usually just means, as the one going through the divorce, you are the only one who cannot serve the divorce papers.

But when choosing a process server or a person to serve your divorce papers, you should choose wisely.   This is because, you may need to contact that person again in the future should something be wrong with the proof of service of your divorce papers.

In this one specific incident a (not a client of ours) called us to assist them with finishing their Valencia divorce.  When we reviewed the proof of service, we determined that it was not completed properly.

(read more below)

 

This means that the proof of service had to be completed again by the person who served the divorce papers.  There were two problems with this.  First, the person was served over 2 years ago.  Second, the guy used his gardener to serve the divorce papers. Basically, he did not know where he was and had no contact with him.

Had he choose someone better suited to serve divorce papers or used a professional company to serve the divorce papers, it would just have been a matter of amending the proof of service and re-filing it.  But because the person was nowhere to be found, the divorce papers will need to be served again.  This starts the 6 month clock all over again.

We can assist you with serving divorce papers.  We will coordinate and have the other person served by process server if that is the desired method.

For questions on how to properly serve divorce papers, feel free to either give us a call or to use our online divorce self help center at California Divorce Tutor.

Valencia Divorce Judgment Should Include FAM-031

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Why You Should Submit Form FAM-031 Request For Default Setting

There are reasons you want to file a FAM-031 when submitting your final California divorce judgment to the court. The main reason is that if you submit the divorce judgment to the court and they have questions, all they can do is reject your judgment and send it back to you asking you to set the matter for a hearing called a default setting.

If you submit it, even if the court does not need it, they won’t set the default hearing, they will just approve the judgment. But submitting the FAM-031 just in case could save you several months in processing time.

 

FAM-031 Valencia Divorce : Do I Have To Go To Court?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Should You Submit A FAM-031 With Your California Divorce Judgment?

We are always recommending that you file a FAM-031 with your California Divorce Judgment. We have done several videos on this.  But we did get a question the other day from a client that I wanted to answer. His questions was, ” If we submit the FAM-031 will I have to go to court?”  His questions was whether the Judge would set a hearing whether they needed one or not just by submitting the form.

The short answer is no.  But watch the video below where I explain how and why you would submit the FAM-031 as part of your California divorce judgment.

We provide a full service divorce throughout California as well providing an online California Divorce service at California Divorce Tutor.

 

Valencia Divorce : Post Judgment Modifications : Divorce Agreements

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When going through a Valencia Divorce ( or a divorce anywhere in California) one of the tools that may be useful is a Stipulation and Order. A Stipulation and Order is documents that allows the parties to a divorce to draft agreements they have related to the issues of their case.

For instance, if you have agreed to spousal support or child support and just about any agreement you want to document, instead of going to court and asking for the judge to rule on something, it is easier if a Stipulation and Order is drafted.

All that is done is the agreements are placed in the Stipulation and Order, both parties sign and then it is sent down to court for the judge to sign.

We offer this service both as a full service option or as a self-help service at California Divorce Tutor

Watch this video for more information.

Valencia Divorce : Valencia Divorce Self Help Services Online

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

For years we have had our full service Valencia divorce services (serving all of California). We were constantly asked for an online divorce solution, one that was more affordable and an online divorce service that was completely do-it-yourself.

Welcome to California Divorce Tutor. California Divorce Tutor is much more than just an online California self help service, we also have tutorials on how to complete contested divorce cases, discovery during divorce, how to prepare motions during your divorce and much more.

For more information watch the video below or go to California Divorce Tutor to learn more.

Valencia Divorce : Self Help Divorce Services Now Online

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Our Valencia divorce service (Serving all of California) is now provided online as well.

I have never been a proponent of the self-help divorce services. You know the ones where you pay a few hundred bucks, sometimes as little as $100 and they promise to help you complete your divorce for you?

The reason I never liked those types of services is because they left all the hard complicated process up to the person completing their own divorce and provided little if any explanation or instruction on how to properly process the divorce forms. This causes many people to end up hiring a company like ourselves to help complete the divorce case. So this meant people were just throwing away their money.

Our online divorce tutorials at California Divorce Tutor are different. This is because we have recorded the process of how to complete your Valencia divorce (serving all of California) step by step, every form with instructions that you can understand. Watch this video for more information.

 

Valencia Personal Injury Attorney Experience

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

So this personal post is going to be another rant.  I’m sorry. But if you are interested in learning what to do after being in an vehicle accident, you will learn from this article as well.

My wife was involved in a pretty bad car accident about a month or so ago.  While she was driving to downtown Los Angeles she came to a stop on the freeway and looked up in her rear view mirror to observe a young woman driver looking down at what she can only assume was her cell phone and coming at her at about 40 miles per hour.

There was nothing she could do and the driver of the other vehicle never even looked up before hitting my wife’s car.

Okay, so that was the setup.

I work in a building on Turnberry in Valencia where there are several professional business’s. Because there is someone in our suite that is a personal injury attorney, I naturally just knocked on his door.  He said not to worry about it and he would take care of it.

Over the next couple of weeks I would check in with him every week to see what we should be doing and asking what is being done.  I assumed he was taking care of it as he stated.

Then my wife and I started noticing something.

The Chiropractor where she was going after the accident said she could not get a call back from the attorney and that several weeks had gone by.

So we went to the attorney’s office and spoke with his partner who I was told by the other attorney was handling the case.  I walked in and asked what information they needed from us for the accident.  He says, “what accident?”  I said, “you guys are handling my wife’s accident!” (my wife is standing right next to me).  Then, in the most rude manner you can think and with a disgusted look on his face, he says, ” I have no idea what you are talking about.”

This was the attorney who the chiropractor had called for weeks without any answer.

What made me mad is how rude he was.  Think of the person in your life you hate more than anything and that would be how he looked at us.  And we were supposedly their clients AND i have worked in the same building as them for 4 years.

I just couldn’t get over how rude he was.  The other attorney was in a meeting so I left a message on his phone and told them we would be looking for another personal injury attorney for our accident and explained how disgusted we were with his partners behavior.

The worst thing is that they never gave us any advice during this entire process.

So my wife contacts another personal injury attorney in Valencia and has a consultation.  During the consultation, this attorney cannot believe that we were not provided with any advice on how to handle the car accident.

Here is what was explained to us about how to handle the car accident. (none of this was told to us by the previous attorney and would have been helpful being right after the accident)

Advice Given From Valencia Personal Injury Attorney

  1. Take time off of work if needed – When my wife got in her accident she was in a lot of pain.  But she felt she needed to go back to work.  This is despite the fact that my wife had a concussion and was nauseous from the concussion.  This new attorney said she should have taken all the time off she needed because the loss of wages is recoverable.  Had we known that, my wife would have taken time off instead of going back to work the next day.  over those days and weeks immediately following the accident, she even put aside her chiropractic care for work even though she was in so much pain.
  2. Go to a real doctor – Not saying other doctors are not real, but my wife immediately went to a chiropractor right after the accident to get adjusted.  Our family is religious about chiropractic care. But she did not immediately go to our Valencia Kaiser until she began feeling super nauseous.  After encouraging her to go (where she learned she had a concussion) she was told to take time off work and that rest was needed.  The personal injury attorney said that you should always go to a MD to have your condition checked out after the accident.  So we did this part correct.
  3. Take pictures of the accident – My wife did this perfectly. She took numerous photos of both vehicles showing the damage that occurred.  The attorney said this was helpful.
  4. Get a police report – When my wife called me from the scene of the accident, she said that a police officer witnessed the accident and was handing it.  Being that I am retired LAPD I knew that a report should be taken.  It turns out that the police officer that witnessed it was off duty and did not work that area so no report was taken. What should have happened is that he should have called for the CHP to come out and take an accident report.  Fortunately, this was a rear end accident so the blame is obvious, but in other types of accidents this might not be the case.
  5. Hire a Valencia Personal Injury Attorney – It is not about being compensated for being injured is it is getting good advice on what to do immediately following an accident.  Had we had the information that was provided to us on day one, we would have handled thing differently.  My wife would have taken the time off necessary to get treatment and feel better before going back to work.

You want to know what pisses me off the most?  I provide so much free information to people going through divorce in California with all our videos, podcasts, free consultations, etc.  I explain to people everything they need to know and usually am not compensated for it and most of the time don’t even know who the people are who watch our videos, etc.

Then, when my family needs help, we don’t get it.  We hire a personal injury attorney to give us advice and take care of us and it does not happen. We trust that someone has our back, especially since we work in the same building and have known each other professionally for years.

But even without all that, common courtesy and decency dictates that these things happen anyways.

Shame on you.  You know who you are.  And when I called you out on it, you didn’t even take the time to walk to my office and apologize.  You want to pretend that everything is okay.

Wait until our paths cross in the building.  I will let you know exactly how I feel about you.

Point of story?  Don’t assume that your friends and colleagues have your back. Do your due diligence and find someone that will take care of you.  Don’t assume that everybody will do what you would do.

I treat my clients like I treat my family and anyone else for that matter.  I greet the person who cleans the toilets in our building the same way I greet anybody else.

I did not want to give names here, but if you are interested in knowing who we ended up with for our personal injury attorney in Valencia just shoot me an email.  My wife very much liked her.

End of rant.

 

 

Valencia Divorce : Divorce Judgment Checklists

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When going through a Valencia divorce, one of the most helpful things we provide you is a divorce judgment checklist. With our full service Valencia divorce process, we utilize these divorce judgment checklists. Now, on California Divorce Tutor, where we show you step by step how to complete your Valencia divorce ( or anywhere in California) we provide you with the divorce judgment checklists that show you exactly what forms you need to complete depending on the type of divorce you are processing.

Watch the video below to learn more about the divorce judgment checklists and California Divorce Tutor.

 

We provide both a full service and online self help divorce service throughout California.