Los Angeles Divorce Courts Closed For Veterans Day 11/11/2015

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Just thought I would save a few people the pain of going to any of the Los Angeles divorce courts on Veterans Day on November 11, 2015.  For those of you who follow this blog or check this blog regularly for updates, I hope to save you a trip.

It seems that many people work on Veterans day and so people forget it is a Federal holiday and end up going to the courthouse forgetting that they will be closed.

So I just wanted to write this quick post to remind folks that the courts will be closed on Veterans Day 11/11/15.

California Divorce & Changing Your Name With Social Security

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As you may or may not know, when you go through a divorce you can make the decision if you want to go back to your former name.  This means, do you want to go back to your maiden name you had prior to marriage?

And no, you can’t use any name you want.  I get asked all the time.  You can go back to your former name only.

That said, if you decide you want to revert to you former name you can do so. The benefit to doing this during the divorce process is that you won’t have to file a separate name change case to change your name later down the road.

So when you get the divorce judgment back from court it is not only your judgment for divorce but the court making an order so you can go back to your former name.  This way you can take the judgment to the Social Security and show them so you can change your name back.

However, the Social Security Administration won’t accept any old copy.  They are requesting a Certified copy of the original. This means that you will have to go down to court and ask the clerks office to pull your divorce case, make a copy of the original and stamp it with a certified stamp to indicate that it is a certified copy of the original divorce judgment.

I wanted to write this because we had a client take a non-certified copy to the Social Security Administration to change her name back and she was turned away and obviously frustrated.

California Divorce & Changing Your Name With Social Security

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

As you may or may not know, when you go through a divorce you can make the decision if you want to go back to your former name.  This means, do you want to go back to your maiden name you had prior to marriage?

And no, you can’t use any name you want.  I get asked all the time.  You can go back to your former name only.

That said, if you decide you want to revert to you former name you can do so. The benefit to doing this during the divorce process is that you won’t have to file a separate name change case to change your name later down the road.

So when you get the divorce judgment back from court it is not only your judgment for divorce but the court making an order so you can go back to your former name.  This way you can take the judgment to the Social Security and show them so you can change your name back.

However, the Social Security Administration won’t accept any old copy.  They are requesting a Certified copy of the original. This means that you will have to go down to court and ask the clerks office to pull your divorce case, make a copy of the original and stamp it with a certified stamp to indicate that it is a certified copy of the original divorce judgment.

I wanted to write this because we had a client take a non-certified copy to the Social Security Administration to change her name back and she was turned away and obviously frustrated.

Los Angeles Divorce Courts Closed For Veterans Day 11/11/2015

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Just thought I would save a few people the pain of going to any of the Los Angeles divorce courts on Veterans Day on November 11, 2015.  For those of you who follow this blog or check this blog regularly for updates, I hope to save you a trip.

It seems that many people work on Veterans day and so people forget it is a Federal holiday and end up going to the courthouse forgetting that they will be closed.

So I just wanted to write this quick post to remind folks that the courts will be closed on Veterans Day 11/11/15.

Avoid Identity Theft During Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When you go through a divorce you will be providing whatever company you work with, with just about all your financial and personal information.  This includes tax returns, pay stubs, credit cards and names and date of births or you and your children.

But nobody seems to ever worry about identity theft!

I have never been asked about our procedures for destroying files after we have completed a divorce case!

I bring this up because I know we are not the only game in town, and many people are just shopping for a low price to get through their divorce.  But what I want to warn people about is the security steps companies, if you can call them that, are taking to protect you.IMG_1442

We are the only divorce paralegal company in Santa Clarita that actually has offices. The majority of people who say they can handle your divorce case aren’t even licensed to operate, rather they are just people doing this on the side out of their home.  What do you think happens to your paperwork?  Thrown in the trash with all your personal information?

I bring this up because my staff and I were recently conducting an end of year file clean-up and had to destroy hundreds of files.

Fortunately we utilize a company called Iron Mountain that provides us with year long bins where we place all our legal documents to be shred which they pick up about every 3 to 4 weeks.  We shred all your documents!

Yes, this comes at a cost, but your financial security and helping to protect you from identity theft is one of our chief concerns.

6 Months? Why Does Divorce Take 6 Months?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

As much as I talk about divorce, the divorce process and explain things to clients, the one thing that just keeps coming up is how long the divorce process takes. We’ll it takes 6 months. Yep, 6 months. Why? Because the court’s want you to have a change to work on the relationship. That is all.

In this video we talk more about how to process your divorce paperwork. Some folks think they need to wait 6 months to turn in their divorce agreements or judgment which is not true. There are certain timeframe restrictions on filing paperwork, but you don’t have to wait 6 months to turn in your agreements. Watch this short video for more information.

Saving Money On Your Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

I talk a lot about how to save money on your divorce. This video discusses the issues of people who hire divorce attorneys but run out of money before they actually have their divorce case finished. We discuss how you can save money by using our service to file your divorce papers. That way, when you get to the point where you actually need a divorce attorney, you will still have some money left over to actually provide you legal divorce representation when you need it.