How And When To Serve A Responsive Declaration | California Divorce

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How And When To Serve A Responsive Declaration | California Divorce

Hi, Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

Today we’re talking about the due dates for filing your, or serving your responsive declaration to a motion.

I’ve recently helped a client file a response and we were talking about when he had to get into my office because there is a certain time-frame you have to file and serve your responsive paperwork.

In a previous video we talked about, if you’re the filing party, the moving party, how and when you need to serve the order to show cause documents on the other party.

But if you’re filing a response, you have other due dates that you need to be aware of.

So if you did recently receive a motion, they should have served you and given you ample time to respond. What the court say is it needs to be sixteen court days plus five calendar days if they’re going to mail it to you.

And we covered that in a previous video.

But if you were going to respond you also have some deadlines. The responsive declaration that you’re going to prepare has to be in court, file with the court and served on the other party, nine court days prior to the hearing.

Now, you don’t have to personally serve it, you can but that’s what that nine days is talking about. Nine court days prior to hearing you have to personally serve that responsive declaration on your spouse, if you’re going to mail it then you add five calendar days. So, it’ll be nine court days, watch out for holidays, plus five calendar days. That’s the time frames when you’re filing, and responding to an order to show cause, a motion, request for order, or whatever you want to call it.

Just keep track of those court days and what you’re going to do. Look at the court date, count back nine court days, then add 5 calendar days, and make sure you mail that out by that date, and make sure you get that filed with the court prior to that nine court day period.

This is Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. For more information, give me a call, 661-281-0266.

Look forward to talking to you.

Choose A Licensed Divorce Paralegal That Is Legitimate | Santa Clarita Divorce

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We keep hearing horror stories of people who used a divorce service that was not licensed, not legitimate or lost their money attempting to use one of the online divorce solutions.

i just read an article online about a paralegal who was charged with what is called “UPL” or Unauthorized Practice of Law. These are serious charges that can bring with them criminal penalties including jail and fines.

As a Divorce Paralegal Service in Santa Clarita, CA that provides California divorce services, this is something we have to be careful of on a daily basis.

There are lots of people out there who are not licensed nor bonded to prepare divorce paperwork, and you need to be careful with who you choose to help you with your divorce.

Because of the amount of fraud in this industry, those of us who are licensed and bonded, have to jump through many hoops to keep our license.  In addition, several regulations are put in place and specific rules have to be followed.

It is interesting actually, because those of us who are licensed and providing divorce services are the ones who have take all these extra steps. Those that are operating illegal paralegal services, of course, are not complying with the new regulations that were created for those not following the law.

The point being, is that when deciding on who to use to prepare your divorce in Santa Clarita, whether it be a full service divorce firm like ours or some online document assembly service, make sure that they are compliant with the law.

One of the biggest headaches for our company is talking to people who were previously burned by another divorce paralegal service.  We have to explain the fact that who they used were not legally supposed to be in business.

Here is how you can make sure you are working with a legitimate business.  First, they should be licensed and bonded.  As legal document preparers, we are issued photo identification that clearly indicates that we are allowed to provide services to the public.  In addition, we are required to hold a bond.

Ask to see these documents before you work with any company who is going to provide legal document preparation.

If you would like help with your divorce, we are a full service divorce document preparation firm that specializes in California divorce.

Filing & Service Due Dates For California Divorce Motions & Request For Orders

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Filing & Service Due Dates For California Divorce Motions & Request For Orders

Hi, Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com

Today, we’re talking about motions, order to show causes, and request for orders.

Essentially that name, is just a duplicate of word of the same thing. Motions, order to show cause, and request for order.

The reason I’m using all three of those is because they have changed the name from order to show cause to request for order recently. It’s the same application; they just changed it a little bit, so I wanted to make that clear.

But what we’re talking about today is due dates.

So when you file a motion in order to show cause or request for order, there are specific due dates you have to comply with in order to serve that and, we’re going to talk about that right now.

So let’s assume you’re filing a motion for temporary orders for child support, spouse support, it doesn’t matter.

You’re in the divorce case and you’re going to file a motion to get a court date for the court to do something, you’re going to ask the court to do something.

So what are the due dates?

So the first thing you’re going to do is file the motion. You’re going to go down to court, get a court date and then you’re going to have your filed documents from the court.

The next thing you need to do is serve that on the other party. You need to serve that on the other party to let them know, hey you need to show up for this hearing because I’m going to go to court and ask the judge to make some orders. So what are the due dates on this?

If you have just filed a motion, what you have to do is look at the court date. To file a motion, you have to serve that motion that you filed with the court, sixteen court days prior to the hearing, so what you need to do is you need to look at the court date, then look at the calendar and count back sixteen court days, not calendar days, court days.

And now remember, these are court days so you need to make sure you check the court website for any holidays, you don’t want to serve this late, the other party could object or do some other things if you don’t serve this at a timely fashion. So look at your court date, count back sixteen court days, and watch out for holidays.

Now that’s the day that that form or that motion rather has to be personally served, that means you have to have someone other than yourself personally deliver it, hand- deliver it to that person, if you want that to count.

Now, the other way you can do that is if it’s not post-judgment. Post-judgment motions have to be served personally but if you have a motion during a divorce case, you can simply mail it to them. So what you need to do is do the sixteen court days and add five calendar days to mail, and that would be a good mail service.

The next due date you need to concern yourself is if you’re filing a response.

The response due dates, that is something I’m going to cover the response due dates on another video. So make sure if you’re responding, check for another video, Google our channel for response dates for motions for divorce cases in California.

This is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com; you can get more information off our website at divorce661.com, or reach me direct at 661-281-0266.

Thanks for reading!

 

How To Move California Divorce Forward | Request Trial Setting Conference

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How To Move California Divorce Forward | Request Trial Setting

Hi Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

Today we’re talking about how to get your case moving, your divorce case moving in California.

So, a lot of folks will call me and let’s say they started their divorce on their own, they didn’t know I existed, they didn’t they could get expert divorce services in California and have someone take care of the paperwork for them, and they attempted to do this themselves.

Let’ say they got a certain way through the process but the other party isn’t cooperating, the other party isn’t filling out their documents, and in some cases you can simply move forward with a default.

But in cases where the other party filed a response, you cannot just file a default and push forward with your divorce. You’re going to have to get the court involved.

So what is it that we need to do to get the court involved to move your case forward, when the other party has entered the case by filing a response? So let me set this up, there are certain procedural steps to a divorce.

Number one, you filed your case and served your spouse; number two, let’s say your spouse filed a response and has now entered the case. The next step for both parties is to complete their financial disclosures. These are known as your preliminary declaration of disclosures.

Once you’ve done that, how do you compel the other party to get them to do theirs? Let’ say, they don’t do it, they’re not doing it, or they intentionally want to stall the case and that’s why they’re not moving forward with preparing their preliminary declaration of disclosure, what can you do?

Well, if you’re with a law firm, and if you’re watching this you’re probably not, what an attorney would do is start a series of letters.

We’re requesting you do your disclosures in thirty days, if not, we’re going to request, file a motion, to compel you to do this. Well that can be a lot of work. Another thing that you can do is simply get the court involved at this point.

And the way you would do that is by filing what’s called a request for trial setting  conference. And this is family law 014, the form number is FAM-014, and what you will do with this is you will file this with the court and you will let them know what the issues of the divorce are. Are they child custody? Spousal support? You want to let them know what they are. And then how long you think the trial is going to last.

So essentially what you’re going to do is you’re asking the court to step in and start setting some dates for things to get moving forward.

So here’s what you can expect to happen, you would file the form, you have to serve it on your spouse.

A couple of weeks later, or a month in some cases, you’ll get the form back from the court letting you know of a court date.

The first court date could be called a trial setting conference; it could be called a case management conference.

Essentially what it is, the courts are going to bring the parties into court and find out what’s going on and where is it at? Once you talk to the judge on that trial setting conference or case management conference, the judge is likely to make some specific orders to move the case forward. So they may say, hey what’s happening?

Well I filed this because the other party hasn’t filed their preliminary declaration of disclosure. The judge may say that well, you have thirty days to do this. And set another conference date down the road.  So what the court will then do now that you have them involved is start setting a series of dates to move this thing forward. That’s what you need to do if it’s not moving forward, if you need to get the court involved in order to complete your divorce when the other party has responded.

I hope this has been helpful on moving your case forward; this is regarding filing a request for trial set in conference for your divorce.

My name is Tim Blankenship, 661-281-0266. And get more information off our website at divorce661.com.

Thanks!

Can You Avoid Divorce By Watching Movies? | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Okay, so I was reading my news feed, that let’s me know about anything divorce related.  This one caught my eye. It said “Couples can avoid divorce by watching movies.?

Before i even read the article, I thought to myself, “Perfect, my wife and I love watching movies together”.

In fact we just had a marathon weekend this Valentines weekend where we watched the entire second season of House Of Cards, which is an amazing show by the way…

So as I was having that thought, I started to read the article. Then I started seeing words like “Clinical” and “Psychologist” and i suddenly realized that this was not about watching any old movie…

So what this story boiled down to is that showed that married couples who watch movies together and then talk about them, will strengthen the marriage.  But again, these are not just regular old movies.

What they did is pre select 50 films that couples could choose from to watch together.  The films had a common theme.  They were films where there were conflict resolution issues in relationships.  They were to watch 5 films of their choosing within 30 days

After the couples watched the films, they would discuss the film using questions provided to them.

So what was the result?

They said of their study that went from 1998 to 2004 showed that folks that participated had a 50% less likely chance of filing for divorce.

Hey, if watching movies can help improve relationships, I am all in. I am married and have been so for 18 years now, and would like to keep it that way.

It is not easy being married and it takes a lot of work to keep it together.  A lot of give and take goes on in our home and so far so good on the home front. Not that we don’t have our days, but I think that is just part of the deal.

If you are interested in learning more about the program or to participate you can go to couples-research.com.

If you happen to check it out, make sure to let me know in the comments section below.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in divorce.  Why do we talk about how to keep your marriage together?  Because we don’t want people to divorce, but when people need help with their divorce, we want them to have an affordable divorce solution available.

Santa Clarita Divorce Rates Rise As Economy Improves

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Santa Clarita Divorce Rates Rise As Economy Improves

In a recent article in Bloomberg, it was reported that there is a worsening U.S. divorce rate due to an improving economy.  Basically, people did not have enough money to divorce during the time the economy was not so good.

In the U.S. during the recession (that they claim ended in June 2009) they stated that there was a 40 year low in divorce cases which was down as much as a third.  Between 2009 and 2012 people getting a divorce in the U.S. rose three years in a row to 2.4 million.  So there is a direct correlation between income and people filing for divorce.

Essentially, what this article points to is that people will avoid getting a divorce for financial reasons.  And I can tell you, without a doubt, that many of my clients going through divorce in Santa Clarita don’t file for divorce specifically because of money concerns.

In fact, most of my clients who filed for divorce and are in the middle of their divorce continue to live together during the entire divorce process simply for financial reasons.

This is so much the case, that people, in some cases, even wait until their tax return is filed.  Every year, I get many clients who call me in December, telling me that they will be filing in February after they have filed their tax return.

I guess so many of us are living paycheck to paycheck!!

Of course, Santa Clarita home prices have a lot do with an improving economy and we have certainly seen an uptick in pricing in Santa Clarita over the last few years. Almost seems that they are back to their pre-recession highs.

In any event, we are definitley seeing more divorce cases being filed now as opposed to the recession period.  I know that a lot of people are using our Santa Clarita Divorce Service, due to the extreme value we provide.

We can do just about everything a divorce lawyer in Santa Clarita can do.  The only exclusions are that we don’t give legal advice and we don’t represent you in court.  The idea being that you are trying to work through your divorce on your own and attempt to come to an agreement.

You can find the original Bloomberg Article Here.

How To Prepare Divorce Fee Waiver In California

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How To Prepare Divorce Fee Waiver In California

Good morning! This is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

And today we’re talking about how to fill out a fee waiver when going through divorce in California.

The fee waiver request form is an FW-001. This is going to be the main form. This is going to be your request form to fill out when you’re trying to get a fee waiver.

Now, it’s pretty self-explanatory but there are some parts of this that I wanted to address.

Number 1, 2 and 3 on this form simply is your information, your job if you have one, if you have a lawyer and what core cost are you asking to be waived. So, I’m talking about number 4, what you’re going to mark, if you’re going through divorce in California, you’re going to mark the first box: Superior Court, fees, that’s under box 4. Number 5, is why you’re asking the court to waive your fees.

So, there’s a couple of things here. The first box, is a box that says ‘I receive:’, and it’s talking about medical, food stamps, SSI, SSP, county relief, if you’re in cal-works or receiving welfare, things of that nature.

Generally speaking, if any of those items qualify on number 5A, you’ll qualify for fee waiver and you won’t even have to see the judge for permission. This is something where the court clerk, at least in my experience, has been able to approve those, right there at the window.

Now, the other option is item 5B and it says ‘My Gross Monthly Household Income is less than the amount listed below:’, and what it does is it gives you 6 scenarios of members of your family size from 1 to 6 and lets you know if your income is below those certain amounts that you automatically qualify for a fee waiver in those circumstances as well.

Now, what about if you don’t qualify under 5A which is, let’s say the food stamps, the welfare, very low income, or 5B where you don’t fall into the income levels there, and many of my clients have that happened.

For instance, if you’re a single person and you’re trying to ask for a fee waiver, you can’t make any more than $1,163.55, that’s a very, very low income to qualify for.

So, what you’re going to do, let’s say you have a lot of bills, you’re unable to meet your bills and you just flat out don’t have the money to pay the filing fee, you can attempt to mark box C, this will be 5C, it essentially says ‘I do not have enough income to pay for my household basic needs and the court fees.’.

Now, when you do this, what you’re going to have to do is fill out page 2. Page 2 is essentially a miniaturized version of an income and expense declaration. You’re going to list your income, your bills, how many people lives with you, what’s the total household income, your property, assets, debts, and so forth – monthly expenses, food clothing – and then you’re going to come down to the bottom, it’s going to have total monthly expenses, and that’s going to be compared to your actual income and household income and the judge will make a determination based on how you prepare this declaration, if you qualify for a fee waiver based on the fact of saying ‘I don’t have enough money to pay for court fees.’ Essentially ‘I have no more money. I live beyond my means.’ is essentially what you’re going to be saying.

So, that’s the third option in requesting a fee waiver. I never hurts to attempt type to get a fee waiver. You will save $400+ on the fee waiver. One other thing I want to mention, the other form you’re going to need to fill out besides the FW-001 is the FW-003. What this is is this is the actual order on court fee waiver.

So, even though its order, you’re still going to fill it out, you’re going to put in your name, your information, and you’re going to mark a box because it says it was granted. You don’t want to go in there with a box marked not granted so you only want to go in there and say the court grants you, you’re just going to mark this box, basically what you’re doing is you’re preparing this for the judge, and all they have to do is sign it, mark that the fee waiver was approved on page 1 and the rest of this is for the court to fill out.

But just make sure you fill out all the caption information, the court information here.

So if you have any questions, you give me the call.

There is a, when you go to, say, Google when you just say, fill-able request to waive court fees, that is something that there will be an information sheet on, it will walk you through it, it’s pretty self-explanatory.

If you need assistance, give me a call, Would be happy to help. My number is 661-281-0266 and I did want to mention one other thing.  You’ll notice on the request to order court fees, that if you, say you simply marked ‘unemployed’ and you have no income and you marked box B which says ‘My income is below a certain amount’, technically, pro the paper, you don’t have to fill out anything else on the financial sheet but I just sent two folks down to court to get a fee waiver, and despite the fact that they had marked box B and said that they did not have to complete page 2, the clerk still had them complete page 2, put down that they’re making no income and they did have some debts to put that down, and actually had them also write, you know, hey give me a reason why you have no income, no job and no debt. They want a brief explanation.

In both these cases, it was, “Hey I’m living with my family members, and they’re helping supporting me.” Whatever your case is, if the court, they’re not just going to let you say unemployed, no income. They’re going to want to ask “How are you supporting yourself?” “Are there people helping you?” and things of that nature.

So, that’s how to complete a fee waiver form for a California divorce. This would be for all courts in California, all divorce courts, that is.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. We specialize in divorce and you can reach me at 661-281-0266.

Thanks for reading!

How To Find A Good Santa Clarita Divorce Lawyer

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

If you read our articles about divorce in Santa Clarita, California, you know that we only recommend you hire a divorce attorney as a last resort.

I came across an attorney blog who had written a great post on how to find a good divorce lawyer in California, and I wanted to add my insights and comments.  You can find the link at the end of this article to the blog in question.

We would never say not to consult with an attorney if you need legal advice, we are just simply saying that most divorce cases in California don’t require an attorney.

That said, there are just some folks that will need an attorney for their divorce in Santa Clarita. The question becomes, how do you go about hiring a divorce attorney in Santa Clarita?

I found this article to be well written and address several things you should consider when deciding on what divorce attorney to choose.

One thing to consider is that every divorce firm in Santa Clarita, CA runs their office slightly different. I would know. I have work for and with most of the divorce lawyers in Santa Clarita in one fashion or another.

Some of the divorce attorneys in Santa Clarita are what you call “Solo Practitioner’s” who work by themselves and may or may not have a paralegal in their office.  These types of attorney’s will generally be answering their own phone and handling all the paperwork on their own.

To the other extreme, you have large family law firms in Santa Clarita, CA that have multiple attorney’s working for them, multiple paralegals and receptionist, etc.

One thing I would add to this article about how to hire a divorce attorney in Santa Clarita is that you have to trust your gut.

Use the ideas and thoughts in this article, but at the end of the day go with the attorney you feel will be right for you.

Here is the article if you were interested in learning more.

Why You Need Our Help During Your Santa Clarita Divorce – Divorce Document Preparation Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

See on Scoop.it – California Divorce Paralegal Articles For Self Represented Clients

Why You Need Our Help During Your California Divorce Hi, Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. We specialize in divorce in California. And today I just want to tell you a little story of a client who called us recently, who is …

 

Tim Blankenship‘s insight:

This is an article and video that we wrote and discusses a story about a client of ours that a lot of people could relate to.

I wanted to add some insight to the article to let you know about your choices in getting assistance when filing for divorce in Santa Clarita, CA.

When you are going through a divorce in Santa Clarita, you really only have four options for getting through your divorce.

Your first choice is that you could attempt to file your own divorce in Santa Clarita.  This is not a good option, because of the people that do attempt to file their own divorce, very few will actually make it without some type of professional divorce assistance.

The second choice (and the next step up) would be to get the assistance of a professional paralegal service (LDA) Legal Document Assistant.  This is a paid service where we will prepare all your documents, go to court for you and assist you along the way. You can go to our website for more information about our Santa Clarita Divorce Paralegal Service

The third option would be to use a professional mediation service.  (We often work hand in hand with mediation services) in preparing the divorce paperwork.  Divorce mediation services will help you come to decisions related to you divorce.

The fourth option and what we believe to be the last resort is to hire an attorney.  If none of the previously 3 mentioned choices were effective for you, then this would be the place to go.

 

 

See on divorce661.com

Online California Divorce Document Company | Horror Story # 1

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Online California Divorce Document Company | Horror Story # 1

Hi! This is Tim Blankenship again with divorce661.com.

And today, I want to talk to you about another client of mine who, prior to calling my service, used the services of one of these online divorce document assembly services.

I’m not going to name names but you know these online divorce document companies that will sell you the forms. They’ll either send you the blank forms from anywhere from 100 to 200 dollars or they’ll send you a series of questionnaires online that you fill out and then it auto-populates your divorce forms.

I have lots of clients that I get that come through here. They’ve done one or both of those and then come to me when they realize the forms don’t work to get their divorce completed.

So, I want to discuss a little bit about why you should not have to use these services.

As an example, this gentleman came in because he used those services where he paid $200, filled out all the forms online and then they shipped all the documents to his home. He came in because he didn’t know where to start – which forms need to be filed, which ones need to be served, which ones need to be completed, and he had a lot of questions.

So, when he brought in all his documents, what we normally do is we’ll go through it in completion and show him how much of a dis-service this is. And what we discovered is he was sent about 20 forms he didn’t need; he had forms that were missing that he did need and absolutely no understanding of how to process the forms once he had them.

Not only that, but the court that they assigned him based on an address they gave was wrong, so had he filed these, he would have been in the wrong court. On top of that there was two separate types of petitions in the paperwork and had he filed the petition they send him, he would have been charged double the cost of the normal filing fee.

So, potentially that would have cost him an extra $435 had he gone this alone.

Now, unfortunately he had already paid for the services and there is nothing I could do, moving forward he said it’s a learning experience and I want to share that with you watching this video, so you don’t fall into the same circumstances.

And I get these types of clients all the time, who want to buy the forms. They are sucked in to believing that it’s easy, in fact he told me that the online company, on the website it says it only takes a few minutes to complete. Well, he spent four and a half hours on these documents. Wasted his money, wasted his time and the documents were completely wrong and then came up here to our company to have us complete all the documents for him.

Now, again I have lots of clients that end up doing this. So, I’m going to do a video every term a new client comes to my office that who used an online assembly service or purchased the forms. I want to talk about this, in the hopes of getting more stories out there.

So, folks would simply just call me. So, they don’t have to go through this and waste their money. If you have more time than money and you can’t afford my service let’s say, don’t go out and buy the forms. All these forms are free, you can do one of two things: go to your local court house and pick up the forms or go send me an email. Tell you what, send me an email and I will send you all the forms.

They’re also online, the court website. If you don’t have a computer, send me a letter. Somehow, call me and I’ll send you all the forms you need. You’re here as a free service to do this, but there’s folks out there that just don’t have the money, we understand that and we don’t want you to spend more money, fifty bucks, twenty five bucks, whatever it is for these forms. They are free, we will send them to you not a problem.

You can send me an email at info@scvlegaldocassist.com or just call me, 661-281-0266 and get more information off our website at divorce661.com, and again just be wary of these companies. There are a lot of them and they have lots of money to spend on marketing.

So, they’re out there, you’re going to find them. Use you’re a professional service like us to prepare your divorce on California. Give me a call.

Tim Blankenship, 661-281-0266.

And have a great day! Thanks for reading!