Santa Clarita Divorce | Terminating Spousal Support | True Default Divorce Cases

How do we handle spousal support on a true default case. Okay what we’re talking about is divorce cases that are true defaults.

What that means is the other party is not participating they’re not cooperating they’re not filing a response they’re not doing anything.

And the question we’re answering today is when you are asking for spousal support to be waived and not have spouse support and even terminate the Court’s Jurisdiction over spouse support.  That can only be done through a request on the petition.

I often talk about in amicable divorce cases where both parties are participating if the parties agree to terminate spousal support that you include some additional language where the parties will both initial indicating that they agree to waive spouse support.

There’s two different versions one for short-term marriages and one with long-term marriages.  Now when it comes to terminating spousal support the issue with true default cases, where there’s no agreement, is it is possible to terminate spousal support if you requested it in the petition and you have a short-term marriage.

One of the issues that always comes up is if you have a long-term marriage over 10 years and you mark on your petition to terminate jurisdiction over spousal support and then when you go to submit your judgment you’re going to have to match your petition and say terminate on the spousal support order.

The issue is the court cannot approve that because California law indicates that spousal support should be reserved unless it has been waived by both parties.  So what’s going to happen if that’s the case is you would have to amend your petition to reserve jurisdiction over the issue of spouse support, re-serve it,  re-file your request enter default then enter then enter your default judgment with Reserve jurisdiction.

This is only an issue on long-term marriages it is non-issue on short-term marriages less than 10 years