Tim Blankenship @ Divorce661.Com | July 29, 2015

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Every once and a while I am not able to sleep. I will go to bed just fine and then wake up super early, not on purpose, sometime around 3 or 3:30.  Today it was 3:45 a.m. when I woke up and despite my best intensions, cannot fall back to sleep.

What happens is that I wake up and my mind instantly starts thinking about the day and I can’t stop thinking.  I will usually lay there for about 30 minutes and then just get up.  So here I am at about 4 a.m. writing this post.  At least I will be can get some marketing done early which is good because I have a busy day.

Today I not only have to run a business but also handle all the kids from morning to night.  My wife works a lot of hours and this week she is traveling far to job sites and is out by 5 and gets home late around 8 p.m.

So after this post I will be making breakfast, and lunch for all of us.  My son is going to summer and school and tutoring and I have to drop him off and pick him up 3 different times throughout the day.  He is redoing a few classes so he can have a 3.0 GPA so he can get into a specific college that the FBI recruits from.

I am glad he has chosen the FBI over a street level cop like I was with LAPD for 13 years.  I have one kid in college and the other is college bound. So glad they have their act together. Much more than I did at their age.  Probably why I ended up in the Marine Corps after high school.  Nothing else better to do. More on that I am sure.

Well, off to start my day.  It is now 4:25 and I have one cup of coffee in me.

Oh, by the way, totally remembering my mom’s birthday today.

Santa Clarita Divorce | Calculating Child Support With Multiple Children Schedules

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When you are going through a divorce in California, you are going to have to come up with some child support numbers if you have children.  The basic premise is that you use the court’s dissomaster software ( you won’t have access, but you will as our client) and punch in the income of the parties and the time share percentages.

It looks like this.

Dissomaster Example
Dissomaster Example

Generally it is pretty easy to figure out. You decide who has the kids what percentage of time and punch in the incomes of the parties and the the software spits out a number. The timeshare percentages are also usually pretty easy to figure out. It usually goes something like this;

There are 3 children and they are all with mom 80 percent of the time. Pretty strait forward.

But how about this scenario;

There are 3 kids and 2 of the kids spend 90% of the time with mom and 1 of the kids spends 20% of the time with mom.

So what is the average time share between the 3 kids?

This is the formula we used to make this determination.

3 kids

Mom
2 kids 90% of time = 180%
1 kid 20% = 20%

200% divided by 3 = 66.66 %

33.33 percent assigned to father as average time share percentage

What we did essentially is take the 2 kids with 90% and multiply that by 2 because there are 2 kids. Then the one kid, (1 x 20% = 20%) The total being 200% and then divided by the number of children to come up with the average time share.

I know this is not calculus, but i figured if one of our clients had a question on it then somebody else out there might as well.

Tim Blankenship @ Divorce661.Com | July 28, 2014

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Today is Tuesday July 28, 2015 and i was reading the post I wrote for Monday and realized I had left out the single most important, yet devastating, thing that happened over the weekend.

I guess I did a good job blocking it from my mind as it was something that was very upsetting.

Our beloved labrador who we had for just over 10 years had to be put down.  He got cancer which resulted in tumors in and on his body.  It started about 8 months ago where we noticed little bumps on his skin which later, and quickly, turned into large tumors on his skin.

We opted for surgery as we thought the tumors could be removed, but about three months after the surgery the tumors began popping up all over his body, despite being on 24/7 steroids which were supposed to shrink the tumors.

We took him to Happy Pets in Valencia where we have been going for a while last Sunday and Dr. Johnson said it didn’t look good and if it were her dog she would opt to euthanize. We decided that we would give it a week so we could have a few more days with him, and later that week on Friday at 5:20 we took him to put him down.

You love pets, but this part is so hard.  This is the second lab we put down in 2 years.  The other one got cancer also, but he was much younger, just 7 years old.  The hardest part was the kids, who have known the Scout since they were 4 and 7, so basically their entire lives.

Scout RIP 7-24-15
Scout RIP 7-24-15

When our last lab died, Saber, we were convinced by our daughter, Aundrea, that we needed another dog. So we have an almost 3 year old lab named Hudson.

Here is a picture of our Scout (along with our Hudson as a baby who terrorized Scout)

So, like i said, for me to write an article on a Monday after a traumatic event over the weekend, i must have really blocked it out on Monday.

I have to say that on day 2 of writing these more personal posts, i am really enjoying it as a sort of recap to the day or even to log in and write a few sentences during the day as my crazy busy days permit.

I think another way of coping for me was to decide to take our 3 year old lab out for a run every day.  This was day two of our runs and because I have not ran in a while, my legs are really sore. Definitely limping around the office today when going to get coffee in the kitchen.

Today has been a super busy day and have started 2 new divorce cases, working on a new Request For Order and answering all the phone calls that come it from new potential clients.  I tell ya, the summer months slow down a bit due to the kids being out of school, but now that they are starting to go back we are already picking up the pace.

Until tomorrow.  Tim

Videos

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Legal Separation or Divorce

Santa Clarita Divorce | Appearing By Phone At Divorce Hearing

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When you are going through a divorce in California, there may be a time during the divorce process where you need to attend a hearing, but are out of state.  Let’s say you are on vacation or perhaps you moved out of the area entirely.

When this happens there is a process where you can ask the court to appear by telephone.  Keep in mind that the court needs to approve what is called the “court call” and you need to have a good reason to be requesting the court call.

Here is how you get approval for a telephone appearance or court call:

  1. Call the clerk in the actual courtroom and advise them that you have a hearing coming up (make sure to give as much notice as possible) and are requesting approval for a court call.
  2. Let them know the reason for the request.  For instance, if you now live out of state and flying in for a 15 minute Trial Setting Conference is not financially feasible would be a good reason.
  3. If they give you the okay, make sure to get their name and ID number, because you will need it when setting up the court call.
  4. if approved, you can go to Courtcall.com and either create and online account or call them.
  5. Court Call will need all the information to your case. Which court, the department, the case number, the parties involved, the judge and the clerk that gave you the approval.  They will walk you through the steps to set up the court call.

From our experience in the past, if you don’t have a good excuse or don’t live far enough away, the clerk will not approve your court call as they would prefer to have you there in person rather than on the phone.

You can anticipate that if you live within i would say 200 miles, they won’t approve the court call.  Of course every clerk is different, but they have been very strict in the past.

If they don’t approve the court call, and the date of the appearance is not convenient, your only other option is to request the court to continue the hearing to a different date, however this would take the agreement by both parties and a joint call to the clerk.

Santa Clarita Divorce | Can I Move After Filing For Divorce In California

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

What do you do if you have filed for divorce in California and then learn that you will be moving out of State or even out of the County or Country?  Now, i am not talking about divorce cases where there will be numerous trials, but I am talking about a divorce case where you are mostly amicable with your spouse and trying to just get your divorce case  completed.

There are two questions I get about this issue.  The first is, ” Can i move out of the County or out of State if my divorce case is still pending?”  The answer is, “Yes.”  Keep in mind that I am not talking about you having kids and all that, just the fact that you don’t have to have your California divorce case completed prior to moving out of state.

The second question is, “Can we help someone who is living out of State to Complete their California divorce case?”  Again, the answer is, “Yes.”

If you are going to move out of the area at some point during the divorce process or find yourself not local to the court when going through a California divorce, you will need our service more than someone who is here.

Let me explain.  The only way to complete your divorce case in California is to prepare, file and serve all the necessary documents in order to complete your case.  This is challenging enough for people who are nearby and can obtain help when needed, but you are even more disadvantaged if you don’t live nearby.

Everything you do will have to be done by mail and that will be a real nightmare for sure.

So i will leave you with this.  If you are living out of state or plan on moving our of State and going through a divorce in California, we can assist you in completing your divorce case regardless of where you live.

Tim Blankenship | Santa Clarita CA | July 27, 2015

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Well, I have finally started what my wife urged me to do about 2 years ago.  And that was to start making personal entries, or blog posts, on to my blog.  She said it would be a good way to just write about myself and our family and a way for people to connect.

My over 1200 blog posts i have written over the years have been strictly work related and I never really talk about me or my family. It makes sense to have some personal entries where i can just write.  I mean, i have made over 800 videos and podcasts and my reasoning is that if people watch me or listen to me and say, ” i don’t like that guy”, well i just saved myself some time from having them have to call me.  I think these personal entries will do the same thing. And also so that my clients and readers of the blog see me as a real person.

That is probably one of the biggest things i wanted to accomplish with my business. I wanted to have a personal service.  Not some online, virtual type of service but a business that people could get real help and talk to real people to get the answers and help they need with issues related to divorce.

So today is Monday, July 27, 2015, and I just got back from a walk/run with our dog Hudson.  Until this past Friday, we had two dogs, the other one’s name is Scout, and we had to put him down on Friday unfortunately. He had cancer and tumors all over his body.  He had surgery to remove some a few months ago, but more just grew back despite having him on steroids which were supposed to shrink the tumors.  This weekend was a hard one to get through.

So I decided that I would make this Monday the day I start running again.  I have been an avid runner and hit the gym regularly, but an injury in 2014 to my shoulder took me out of the game for a while.  Then honestly, I just got lazy and it was hard to get back into.

So today I took our other, younger lab, Hudson  for a run. He is going on 3 years old and since Friday, when we put Scout down, he has been acting a little strange.  A little depressed i would say. This happened to Scout when we put our first dog down “Saber”.  Scout became depressed and we had to get his mind of things by walking him more etc.  So this is what I am going to do with Hudson.  Keep him busy (and me busy) and take him on  runs every morning.  Well, at least that is the plan.

Having just returned from my run, and still sweating, i am writing the article from my house while I wait for my son, Justin, to get out of summer school at Valencia High School.  My first appointment today at the office is not until 10:30 a.m., so i have some time to work from home before picking him up and then going to the office.

It is nice to have the ability to work from home for an hour or two, or just to have the flexibility.  I have everything to run my business from my home, but i do prefer to work from the office.  Is is just after 8:30 a.m. and I received an email from both my employees that they have arrived to work. It is nice to have staff so the business keeps on running smoothly.

I guess it is time to start doing my marketing.  I spend probably 6 out of every 8 hours working on growing the business by writing blog posts. social media, recording videos and podcasts and then uploading them. This is how i have grown the business over the last few years and people who find us usually say they found us online reading some article or watching a video or listening to a podcast.

My mom’s birthday is coming up on July 29th and I am making a point not to forget.  I am usually bad with birthdays, my excuse is that i am working all the time and super busy, but that is no excuse. Maybe these blog posts will be a good way to remind myself of things.  One could only hope.

I think that is it for this mornings post, time to get ready to get to the office.  Gladly I live in Santa Clarita and my office is only 5 minutes from my home.  Until tomorrow.

Santa Clarita Divorce | Modifying Spousal Support Or Child Support

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We get a lot of calls from people who are already divorced who want to modify their spousal support or child support.  Usually the person who is paying wants to lower it and the person receiving wants to increase it.

What normally occurs is that there is a change in circumstances such as a change in income with the parties or with regards to child support, they may be changing the custodial timeshare which affects the child support amount.

Regardless of the reasons, the first thing we always do is run the numbers through the court’s dissomaster software to get a sense of whether or not it makes sense to go through with the modification.

Every once in a while, someone will call and i will run the numbers for them and we determine that if they filed the modification request that it would have actually turned out worse for them.  Sometimes is just does not make sense at that moment to file a modification and usually what we will do is tell them to wait until a certain event has happened and come up with a plan regarding the best time to file the modification.

If you have current orders in place it is always a good idea to have those handy so we can make an apples to apples comparison. We also will need to know what orders from what date we are modifying so the court knows which set of orders we are asking to change.

If you have any questions on whether or not it makes sense to file a modification for spousal support or child support, make sure to give us a call.  We can prepare your motion and declaration, file it with the court and get your court date for you.

Santa Clarita Divorce | Requesting Name Change During Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When you file for divorce one of the choices you will be able to make is whether or not you want to go back to your former name. This is part of the divorce petition (FL–100) and you simply indicate that you would like the court to order that your maiden name be restored.

What is nice about this is that you won’t have to go through a legal name change process down the road if you later decide to go back to your former name.

And keep in mind that you don’t have to change your name the minute the divorce becomes final.  You could hold on and say wait until your children are grown and out of school to do so.  Just make sure to keep a copy of your judgment so when you are ready to change your name you have the necessary paperwork to do so.

Also, I wrote about the changing your name with Social Security and the possibility that they might require a certified copy.  If you are going to wait to do the name change for several years and know you will most likely change your name down the  road, it would be a good idea to get a certified copy now before your case sits to long and is placed in archives.