How To Complete California Divorce Summons | Santa Clarita Divorce

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How To Complete California Divorce Summons | Santa Clarita Divorce

Hi! This is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist, and we’re going to continue on with how to represent yourself and how to prepare the specific forms.

And a little bit about us quickly, we are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation service, we specialize in the divorce process in California, we have years of experience working for the courts, in the self-help centers, and for local area family law firms, here in Santa Clarita

We have multiple websites; we serve all of Los Angeles County. If you are looking for specific court information in your location, feel free to use one of those websites you see on your screen, you will get court specific information; there’s video resources and a host of other information that you will find very helpful when representing yourself and trying to learn about the divorce process.

The text in this post is the transcript of the below video describing how to complete the California divorce summons and explaining its use.  

So today we are going to talk about the summons. We are now on to the summons; let’s take a look at what the court says we need to complete here next. We’ve been talking about step one here and we talked about the petition; now we are going to talk about the summons, FL-110 and how to prepare that form.

So let’s take a look, I have one here, I have summons …petition… here are the summons. So let’s talk about the summons, and we’re going to fill it out.

If you have been served divorce papers, make sure to check out our article on how to file a California Divorce Response.

There is not a whole lot to fill out on here but you want to draw your attention onto some of the information that’s on here. So we’re going to, as a petitioner, we’re going to complete the summons here; notice to respondent, so this is going be your spouse’s name.

Okay, respondent’s name, I think we have been going by John Smith throughout this video series. You won’t have a case number yet because this is one of the initial filing forms.

So let’s talk about this, there’s some directions the court is giving to both you and the person who’s going to receive this. They’re indicating that you have 30 days after the summons and petition are served on you to file a response, so this is to your spouse, at the court and have a copy served on the petitioner.

A letter or phone call will not protect you. So it’s important that you let your spouse read this ‘cause what they’re talking about is some of the legal actions you can take if your spouse doesn’t file a response; and how to proceed through the divorce process, even if they don’t respond.

Let’s go down the page here, okay name and address of the court, so you’re simply going to type in, Los Angeles Superior Court, 900 Third Street, San Fernando CA 91340.

The name and address and phone number of the attorney, or the petitioner without an attorney, so this will be you; and one two three, 222 Main Street, City, State and Zip, and phone number, okay, we’re going to put that on in here.

Don’t fill out this date, that’s for the clerk, don’t put the date in here, leave it blank. Here you have: check this box as an individual. Go down to page 2, and I want to draw your attention to this big box here on page 2 so, it says warning, important information; you need to read this, this applies to both the petitioner and the respondent in the divorce process.

There are these standard family law restraining orders that go into effect immediately, as far as removing the minor children from parties, cashing, taking out money, transferring, doing any of these things, these types of things with your finances; concealing, disposing of property, you know, you want to keep everything in stash while you are restrained from making any changes, including taking folks off of life insurance and things of that nature.

So, at this point let me draw your attention to this, again there isn’t much to this particular form; it is one of the initial documents, you have the summons and the petition that are required.

There’s also another form, called a Family Law Case coversheet, that’s one of the local area forms, that’s why it’s not discussed on the court website. So if you need more information on that, please give me a call; we’re also going to prepare a video on that as well.

So to just to recap on this, this covered the summons and you want to take a look on the automatic restraining orders that kick in once you start the process. Again we are licensed and bonded legal document preparation service serving all of Los Angeles County and all the courts in Los Angeles County.

We provide a full service divorce company in Santa Clarita and serving all of California. which means we can complete your divorce regardless of where you are in California.  You do not have to come to our office; we have the divorce process down to a science, it’s very seamless and simple when you use our professional divorce services. If not, I hope you enjoy the videos and hope they are helpful in testing you and completing your divorce forms.

Again if you have any further questions, feel free to call us, visit one of our local websites for your area. Other than that I hope you enjoyed and you continue on watching the videos. We hope to have several hundred videos at the time when our video series is complete covering all aspects of divorce. Again, Tim Blankenship, SCV Legal Doc Assist. Have a good day.

How To Complete California Divorce Petition | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Hello again, this is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist. Today we’re going to be doing a how-to video on how to prepare the petition for divorce.

The county of Los Angeles says that there are two forms that you need to file in order to initiate a divorce in California. So we’re going to, in this video, just discuss the petition alone, and there’ll be future videos on the other forms as we move along here.

Now, we are a legal document preparation service. We specialize in the divorce process in all of California. And you can see we have dedicated websites throughout Los Angeles County based on your area code; and if you’re looking for specific information regarding the divorce process, specific court information in your local area, please use one of our websites you see on your screen now or give us a call for information.

In the video below we mention that we are virtual for purposes of assisting folks throughout California, however we do have offices in Santa Clarita, CA.  The text of this post is the transcript of the video.

We are a full service document preparation service that means we can help you regardless of your location in California, we do serve all the courts in California, and if you’re looking for assistance through the divorce process, get your paperwork completed, and not have to step foot into an office and do it completely online, we’re your firm.

So let’s move on. Again, this is probably our 5th or 6th video in how-to and this is for people going through the divorce process without attorneys, who are in pro per, representing themselves, we’re trying to make it easier to find this information so they can get through the process; and if not, use our service if they need an affordable way to have someone professionally prepare the paperwork.

So today we’re going to talk about just completing the petition.

If you’ll note here on the LA County website, as far as the steps you’ll see here that the petition FL-100 is one of the forms that you need to complete, so we’re gonna talk about that specifically today.

So, let’s pull up the petition here, that’s not it, okay here’s the petition, FL-100, this is one of the first forms that you’ll need to complete; and if you’re representing yourself, I’m just gonna go through this and have you follow on, you can pause the video if you’re actually doing this on your own, not a problem.

So you’ll be John Smith, and 123 Main Street, and you put your city, state, and zip here, your phone number, you just punch this in here.

If the court needs to contact you it’s important you have that in here. Your email address, you can put that in if you want; not necessary, it’s optional. Here for attorney you’re gonna say In Pro Per, or some people put Self-represented, your choice.

And, you’re going to be Superior Court of Los Angeles. For court address we can use the, let’s use our San Fernando branch, 900 Third Street, and that is the North Valley branch. Petitioner, you’re gonna put your name here if you are filling this out. This would be your spouse’s name here. And case number, you won’t have one yet, ‘cause you’re just filing the paperwork.

You were filing for dissolution of marriage, that means divorce. If you have lived as a resident of the state for the last six months you’re gonna mark this box, if your spouse has also been here for the last six months you can also mark that box as well.

Put in your date of marriage, here you’re gonna put the date of separation, and then give us a total, years and months. If you have minor children, you’ll mark this box, but if not you mark this box, but if you do, you’re gonna put in the name, date of birth, age, male or female, and you’ll also have to do another form this UCCJEA if you have minor children; we’ll discuss that in another video altogether.

Separate property: here you can identify property which you consider to be separate. We’ll talk about separate property, community property in other videos. We use some boiler point language when we professionally prepare your documents with this company; otherwise you can itemize separate property here, you can say you want it to be confirmed to yourself, so you say confirm to petitioner, and again you can put the property in here if you like.

Page 2 of the divorce Petition

Page two, you’re going to indicate your community property that property assets and debts that you accumulated during marriage. Again, you can use the boiler point language that we use if we are preparing your forms or you can indicate what that community debts are; generally speaking though, for community assets and debts there won’t be enough room here to do so; and you can use language that essentially says you’re gonna supplement your financials down the road.

You’re gonna request dissolution of marriage based on irreconcilable differences, this is generally, this is all I have done, and this is ninety-nine percent of the time it’s gonna be irreconcilable differences. The courts don’t care your reason for divorce, just that it’s irreconcilable.

Alright, so this is going to be regarding some more of you’re asking for the court, legal custody regarding the children, if you want it to be joint you mark this box, if not you can say you want legal custody, to you, physical custody to you, or you can just do joint, it’s completely up to you.

These forms, again we’ll do a videos on these forms, but these are attachments to the petition that you, some of these are for say, child custody, visitation orders, holiday schedules, and things of that nature.

You can ask the court to terminate jurisdiction and ability toward spousal support to the other spouse. You can ask for property rights to be determined. And if you’re the wife and you want your name back, you can say I want to go back to my former name and you can put that here. So this covers the petition, just make sure you date it, you sign it, and put your name here. And this is how you complete the petition.

Again, my name is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist, providing self-help legal services, specializing in divorce in all of California,

please give a call if you’d like your forms professionally prepared, and if not enjoy the videos and hopefully they’re helpful and representing yourself and getting these forms completed.

So please give me a call if you have any questions, you wanna find out some of our affordable pricing, schedules for preparing your forms; other than that I’d be happy to help you or simply enjoy the videos. The next video will be on the summons so keep on watching if you’re moving through the process with us and I hope you have a good day.

We Handle Divorce Cases Anywhere In California

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How are you doing? This is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist, a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm specializing in divorce.

Anyways, as I drive out to Rancho Cucamonga, I remember that I have several cases in the Rancho Cucamonga courts, in the San Bernardino County courts, and wanted to comment on the fact that a lot of folks don’t know that even though we are headquartered in Santa Clarita, that we service all courts in Los Angeles county, as well as other surrounding counties in California

The divorce process is identical aside from there being a few local forms which are easy to locate once you’re on the website.

Our firm has cases in San Bernardino County, San Diego County, up in Sacramento; just about everywhere.

There are like fifty some odd counties in California, and we have cases in quite a few of them. So if you are anywhere in California and you happen to read this article, we can help you.

Some folks locally like to drive in, I don’t know, maybe a fifty-sixty mile radius, but many of our cases that we handle are completely done over the phone, by fax and email.

So, give us a call. You can reach us direct at 661-281-0266, or you can get more information on our website at divorce661.com.

What Is The Divorce Rate Among Baby Boomers In California

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Hi this is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com and today I wanted to talk to you about an article I read in the Los Angeles Times today and it was called “The Great Divorce Boom”. And what it was referring to was the increase in divorce cases relating to the baby boomers.

The baby boomers as you know are a large population that have been moving through society and they’re getting older now and two things have happened:

Number 1, they have started to divorce in higher numbers, and number 2, the divorce rate is increasing, just in general.

So what we’re finding in here, at least what this article has indicated in the LA Times is that the divorce rate among baby boomers, this huge population, is now at 25%, so 25% of all baby boomers are now getting divorced. And that’s a huge number when you look at how large the baby boomer population is.

The interesting thing is the divorces for baby boomers in the past had been right around 10%. And not just with baby boomers, but with the older population, or what they’re referring to as “grey divorcees”, assuming that you have grey hair, that’s what they’re referring to.

So that said, we are noticing in our business, we provide a legal document preparation service, we specialize in divorce, and I would say that our client base exceeds that 25% rate for grey divorcees, for maybe baby boomers, and let’s say people over 50, we are seeing a huge population of folks come through our offices who are going through divorce.

So I would say that exceeds, at least here in the Santa Clarita Valley, that 25% rate I would say it’s closer to 40% of our client base currently.

So I just wanted to get this information out there, if you are over 50 and you are going through divorce, you are not alone.  You’re not the only person doing this; in fact you are among a large population, a growing population of folks getting divorced at an older age.

And I just want to let you know that you are not alone in that. Twenty five percent of you by statistic will end up divorced at some point over 50.

It’s a sad number, but it is what it is. It’s not just with the baby boomers, this is an issue, shouldn’t say an issue because getting divorced could be a good thing, could be a bad thing, but divorce is growing with all age brackets; not just with folks over 50.

However it has been noticed that that population is getting divorced in higher numbers.

If you have any questions about divorce and the divorce process in the California, my name is Tim Blankenship, feel free to give me a call, you can reach me direct at 661-281-0266, or as always at our website to get more information divorce661.com. Thanks!

Court Facilitator vs. Court Mediator | Los Angeles Superior Court

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Hi! This is Tim Blankenship, owner of divorce661.com. Today I want to talk to you about the difference between the court mediator and the court facilitator. These are two services that are free. If you consider paying your filing fee with the court, part of the services of the court is to be able to use the court facilitator and the court mediation services.

So here’s the difference.  The court mediator is an attorney who works for the court and a neutral third party and will assist you in helping you come to an agreement on certain issues. These issues generally relate to your child support, child custody and child visitation issues. .

Mediation is required if you go and you’ve filed a motion for child support, child custody, child visitation or some type of request for order regarding those issues, or you can make an appointment with them at any time when you need assistance coming up with a parenting plan.

The court facilitator on the other hand is another attorney working for the court and is another neutral party that doesn’t represent either one of you and their job is to help you come up with a solution for spousal support, that’s their sole function.

So if you have questions regarding spousal support, how much you have to pay and what the law says as much as spousal support is concerned, you can go work with the court’s facilitator to help come up with a figures for as how much is spousal support,  if any is going to be paid.

Both these services are provided by the court. They are not mandatory that you come up with an agreement. They’re not going to force you into an agreement.

They’re there to educate you and hopefully help you come to an agreement regarding child support, child visitation and overall parenting plan.

With the mediation service and with the facilitator to help you come up with help as far as spousal support is concern.

We are a full service divorce document preparation firm specializing in California divorce and headquartered in Santa Clarita, CA.

Why Both Spouses At Divorce Consultation Is A Good Idea | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

This is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist. We specialize in divorce in California and are headquartered in Santa Clarita. What I wanted to discuss is how it might be a good idea, of course this is assuming that things are mostly amicable with your spouse, if you’re going through divorce.

This video explains when it is a good idea to bring your spouse to your divorce consultation.

It was actually the first time that I had agreed to that, not because I had any issue with it, but because no one had asked, and it actually turned out to work out very well, and I wanted to consider that as an option; instead of coming in and meeting me on your own and filing.

You’re going to obviously have tell your spouse at some point, so maybe bring it up and you both come in  at the same time and meet with me and we can get a lot of paperwork done and answer questions for both parties.

This was helpful in a lot of ways, but most importantly, aside from getting a lot of the paperwork done is if you hire me to help both parties prepare the divorce paperwork for you, for both of you, the spouse that did not hire me, did not know who I was prior to receiving the paperwork, always seem to be a little bit cautious in working with me because they were not the one to hire me.

When these couples came out and met with me at the same time, both of them were very comfortable and will have no issue moving forward with me carrying the paperwork for both parties. So it was a very good situation; I do highly recommend it.

In cases where you know that it would be a low conflict style divorce or uncontested divorce; because both of you can come in at the same time and we can answer questions, both for you and your spouse so both of you feel comfortable as far as what the process is going to be.

And so you’ll realize that hey, I’m not an attorney, I’m not here to give you legal advice or represent one party or the other. I’m here to push the paperwork through, explain the process and when you need specific information or you get stuck or you need help coming to decisions on certain things, what am I going to be able to do to help you? Advise you as far as what the court process is, how to get appointments from the mediators. So the idea is that I want both of you to feel comfortable in working with me so for one rate we get the entire divorce process done.

Again, this is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist. we are headquartered in Santa Clarita. Please give me a call in 661-281-0266. Or you can get more information off our website at divorce661.com

How To Write A Divorce Motion Declaration And Response Best Practices | Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

 I wanted to give some pointers if you’re looking to prepare a declaration, perhaps for a motion, maybe request for order if you’re filing for a motion or even if you’re responding to a motion.

I want to go over some of the best practices, things to avoid and things of that nature. Most of this information is things I’ve seen going to the court system and when I work at law firms, how to write the declarations, how to work with them and so forth.

You can watch the video below for more information.

First, I want to talk a little bit about the structure of your declaration, how to start if off and so forth. When you write a declaration and you are preparing this as a motion, you want to give first a little bit of background of abut your circumstance.

So maybe a short paragraph about how long have we been married, her name, the respondent’s name, if you have children and how long the marriage was and things of that matter.

If it’s a child custody or child visitation, just give a little bit of background information so the court knows a little bit about what’s going on. Then, if you’re filling on a request for order, there is specific order to the way this is drawn up.

First, you have child custody, then child visitation, child support, then spouse’s support, attorney’s fees and costs, property restraint and property control. Right now, talking about the FL-300, you can use that for your template in how you’re going to address the issue.

So, if you have child custody issues, you want to discuss in your request for order, then talk about those issues first. In doing this, it’ll flow in the same manner that the application is set up and it’ll make it much more understandable for the court and for the person you’re sending this to address.

Same thing goes if you’re filing a response to request for order, follow the same suit. Even if the other party didn’t do it correctly, go right down in the same order that it shows and is reflected on the application and you’ll be in good shape. This will keep you on task and keep you from bouncing around from ideas you had. Handle all issues regarding the child custody before moving on to the other issues.

We do assist in preparing motions, request for orders or order to show causes both for petitioners and respondents. We can do responses as well; we do them both during the marriage, we do them for paternities and we do them post judgment. We can take care of all this for you, please just give us a call.

My name is Tim Blankenship, owner of divorce661.com and you can reach us at 661-281-0266. Thanks for reading!

 

Attorneys For Dividing Your Pension During Divorce (QDRO Attorney – Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Hi this is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. You can reach us at 661-281-0266 and today we are talking a little bit more about QDROs, Qualified Domestic Relation Orders and our QDRO Preparation Service.

You do not need to use an attorney to divide your pension. We can prepare your Joinder and QDRO for about 1/3rd the cost of hiring an attorney to prepare your Qualified Domestic Relations Order.

If you have questions about QDROs and what their use is for, pension division and what not, feel free to check our YouTube channel, we have done a video on that in the past to give you more information about why you may need a QDRO service or to have a QDRO prepared for your pension.

My name is Tim Blankenship, again with divorce661.com. If you have any questions about QDROs, QDRO Serivice, or just in general information about divorce, feel free to give us a call. Again you can reach me at 661-281-0266.

 

008: Why January Is Divorce Month In California

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008: Why January Is Divorce Month In California

January has always been the busiest month of the year when it comes to divorce filings.

Most people say it is because of the holidays and people just don’t want to deal with it.

Others say it is because folks have spent all their money on presents or because they are waiting because of the kids.

We discuss these issues and more in this podcast.

How To Serve California Divorce Papers

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

In this article (and video) we are discussing how to serve divorce papers in California.  This would be the next step in the divorce process in California after you have completed and filed your summons and petition.  If you have not prepared your divorce papers yet, go back to this article and watch step one on how to complete your summons and petition.

In this series of videos we are discussing how to prepare your divorce forms or going through the divorce process in its entirety per California court website, we’re essentially just going form by form and discussing each of the forms.

If you are attempting to complete your own divorce Make Sure To Use Our Automated Divorce Software or call us for our full service divorce solution where we will take care of everything for you.

In the previous video we talked about the initial forms to file for divorce, the summons and petition; we’ve also prepared videos to discuss exactly how to fill them out step-by-step.

This video is going to be discussing in serving of the forms. So, let’s take a look at the court website and look at what they consider to be step two of the divorce process which is service of the forms.

Below is a transcript of the video.

So what they’re saying here is that someone 18 or older and not the petitioner, so not you or the person who’s filed in the initial paperwork serves the paper work on the other party which is now, from here on out going to be called the respondent.

You file, or you serve rather, those documents along with a blank FL-120 form, which is a response form. Whenever you file, or whenever you serve documents, generally you’ll have to serve it with a blank copy of what they’re supposed to file in response to what you’ve filed.

We’ll talk about that in other videos. So, let’s talk about the two different forms of service. Now, when I work with clients, generally these are clients that are representing themselves; they don’t have an attorney, and they are generally uncontested matters, which means both parties are mostly in agreement or they’re going to use the court system to help them get them get through the process, either through the facilitator’s office or the mediators office.

But they’re not going to use attorneys; they’re going to kinda work it out on their own, and I’ll prepare the divorce paperwork for both parties.

So that said, there are two different types of service. The process of service of getting the forms served is what will initiate the divorce process, because technically you can file for divorce, never serve it, and the courts will never know what’s going on; so once you’ve served the forms that’s what will start the divorce process essentially, and that’s when the six-month waiting period begins.

It’s when that form is served. So it’s important that this is done correctly. I’ve spoken with clients who have gone, what they thought, all the way through the divorce process, but they never filed some of these crucial documents, so let’s talk about them now.

We’re going to talk about the FL-115. The FL-115 is the proof of service of summons. This is a specific form that you will file with the court if you are gonna have a third party serve the paperwork on your spouse.

So let’s say you filed the paperwork, got that paperwork back from the courts, now you’re going to have your adult son, or a neighbor hand this paperwork to your spouse. And so what you’ll do is that person will fill out their name and address here, phone number, okay, all the same court information is going to go on here like it did on the summons and petition on the previous videos; street address of the court, mailing address of the court, city, branch, name, you’re the petitioner, the respondent’s name.

At this point you’ll have your case number so make sure you indicate that here. And what you’re gonna say that here that you filed the Family Law petition FL-100. Summons FL-110, and a blank response, and there’s FL-120. You can get these forms online or give me a call if you have to provide it for you.

And the party who serves them, so your neighbor, adult child or whoever you have to serve this paperwork, is going to fill this out. You’re gonna hand this to them and they’re going to have the forms to your spouse, and then they’re going to type in here or hand out in here, where they were served, that is was done by a personal service, on what date at what time.

And page 2, they are going to go down here and say that that the notice of the person served was done as an individual, and the name of the person you served will go here, their address, their phone number, you’re gonna say they’re not a registered process server, due to most cases they won’t be, then they’re gonna date it, then they’re gonna sign it.

Now, this is important that this form is filed, this is not given to the other party; you’re gonna hand the divorce paperwork to your spouse, this form needs to get filed with the court to notify them that in fact, the other party has been served.

Now, in uncontested divorce cases, where let’s say you and you’re spouse are mostly in an agreement, you’re going to go forward in cooperation to the divorce process, what I like to do is attempt to do an alternate method of service, which kinda keeps things from heating up; no one like being handed paper from someone they don’t know, saying you’ve been served, which is this process here.

So, what we’re gonna discuss is this alternate method of service, called notice and acknowledgement of receipt. This is an alternate proof of service where you and the other party, so your spouse, simply sign a form acknowledging the fact that they’ve been served.

So instead of them being handed paperwork and being told they are being served divorce paperwork, you can literally, this is technically supposed to be mailed from another party, so where I’m working with both husband and wife, I’ll get the papers back from the court, I’ll mail this to the other spouse with a letter indicating that if they sign this they don’t have a process server come out, it takes money.

So you fill this out for them,and I’ll indicate the form’s again, just very similar to the other form, there’s petition, summons, and a blank response is on here. So you can send this to them, I would date this, then I’d put my name, then send this; and then the spouse being served will simply indicate the date they’ve received it, print their name and sign it.

And this, just like the other form, will be filed with the court. And this is a substitute of service; it’s just as good as serving with a process server. And again this makes it, in trying to keep it uncontested, and keeping the parties talking and cordial as they can be; it is a divorce, so there are gonna be some … this is the form we’ll be likely used.

My name is Tim Blankenship, owner of SCV Legal Doc Assist, licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm, specializing in the divorce process, and we can work with you all throughout California.