Property Must Be Listed In Petition – California Divorce

If you’ve watched our videos you know that we’re always the first to report changes in policy or procedure with the court system in regards to Divorce in California and we just got notified

And usually this is because of trial and error. We submit so many cases to the courts in California that we’re usually the first company to be notified of any changes.

And usually that’s not them calling us and saying ‘Hey Tim, there’s been some changes.’ Because there are always changes to the courts occurring they don’t usually publicized those.

So we’ll normally be notified by getting a rejection of a judgment indicating some of the new policy.

In this particular case this came from the Pasadena Courthouse. This judgment rejection specifically and even more specifically came from judge R. Carlton Seaver in department as one.

And this is again in the Pasadena Courthouse. And it’s interesting just to know quickly before we get into this that the courts every courthouse operates slightly different although there are general policies and procedures to be followed.

But each department so each court room each judge also slightly alters the way they operate their court room.

In this particular case we have never seen this before. So what this is in this judgment was something we prepare that was rejected.

It basically says that no order in default judgment if not requested in petition. And this is regarding property division.

Now we’ve always reported that if you file a default where there’s no response and the other party is not involved that you have to divide the community property evenly.

That’s not what we’re talking about here. What this is saying is that in the petition when you file that petition on the bottom of page one, it talks about your separate property.

And at the top of page two it talks about your community property.

This is saying that if on the petition you do not indicate community property either on the petition itself or on the FL-160 which is a property declaration and attach that to the petition and serve that along with the petition at the same time the judge will not make any property orders.

And the reason this is different is because routinely for years we have submitted petitions without listing any property and we simply say to be amended.

And that has been satisfactory through all the courts in California for as long as we’ve doing this.

This particular judge now has decided that he is not going to allow us to amend the petition through filing the default along with the property declarations. So Iet me back that up so it makes sense.

In the petition if you don’t list community property either on the petition itself or in the FL-160 and serve simultaneously with the petition you can’t ask for default in with the property because what we would normally do is put ‘to be amended’ for community property and then we would file the request in our default with the property declarations listing their community property and this particular judge in Pasadena is now saying that is not going to work.

So we’ll just have to learn as we go with regards to Pasadena we will make sure to comply with this particular judge’s rule.

But I want you to know that if you have Pasadena default case that this is going to be an issue of rejection that is not been discussed or at least talked about like we are today.

So we want to get this out on video. If you have any question about this feel free to give me a call.

The number is 661-281-0266. We are a Full Service Divorce Paralegal Firm specializing California Divorce.

So if you need assistance with your Divorce we’d be happy to pick up where you’ve left off or if you’re just getting ready to file your Divorce case please give us a call.

Again, we can start through and finish your Divorce case for you.