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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- if approved, you can go to Courtcall.com and either create and online account or call them.
- 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.
