Why We Give Our California Divorce Information Away For Free

Today, I want to talk about a phone call I got yesterday. We had a potential client call and I was talking to her on the phone and we’re talking for about 15-20 minutes.

She’s asking a lot of questions, a lot of questions that we get everyday about the process and procedure of divorce and how things work and so forth.

And she said that she’s been calling around and she had talked to some other folks. And that she felt that they were all about the money.

They didn’t want to give too much information. They were just ‘Here is what we’ll do for you. Here is how much is going to cost. No, we’re not going to tell you the process.’

And really what it was is they were afraid. These people are afraid you’re just going to take the information and go do your own divorce.

In fact one of the folks that she spoke to said, ‘I don’t want to give you…I’ve already given you too much free information.’

And I was shocked to someone actually said that. So she was on the phone with someone whether it’d be an attorney or service like myself, and they told her ‘I’m giving you too much free information.’

And they won’t talk to her anymore. And I was shocked because if you know anything about our company and our over 800 we’ve done in our podcast, our radio show, our thousands of articles we’ve written on our blog we give it all away and we give it all away for free.

And I love the fact on one hand that all these people are afraid to give out the information because it makes my information more valuable.

In addition to that who are you going to turn to once you’ve watched my video and maybe you attempted to do your own divorce or gave you some insights for information and who are you going to turn to when you do need help with your divorce?

It’s going to be the person who helped you whether that’d be if you’ve listened to our podcast, watching our video or maybe we had our phone consultation and you’re still considering things.

You definitely not going to go to that person, who told you,’ I’ve already given you too much free information.’

That said when you’re going to go through a divorce use the folks that you trust.

And I’ll you one thing too what bothers me that’s why I like about it when I don’t like about it is this is so indicative of the industry of the legal field especially among attorneys.

If you go consultation they won’t tell you anything. They will answer your legal questions.

But they will keep you in the dark and my belief as I do this specifically to keep you in the dark so you’re more reliant on their services.

When you use our services we talked to you about the entire process, procedure, we keep you in a loop because you need to know what’s going on and understand the process.

We have calls day in and day out from people who had been dropped by their attorney for one reason or another usually because they ran out of money.

And they are clueless, asked you what’s going on or where their cases at because they kind of just said ‘Here’s the money. Take it and run.’

And now they’re stuck no money and calls us to the process and procedure. So my stake on this is we’ve given it all away for free.

We have so many resources. We know people use our videos and complete their entire divorce case.

They email us and say ‘Tim thanks I watch your videos and I completed my divorce.’

Now my competitors tell me ‘Tim why are you doing this? You’re taking food and money out at our mouths and out at our pockets.’

And I say ‘That’s not true. These people who use these free resources are never going to hire us for this service.’

They are people either don’t have money or they have so much time on their hand that they’re able to do this.

But for the people we’re shooting for and they were trying to attract us folks who are too busy to do this who are looking for we’d had this professionally done.

And I’ll tell you the information we put out for free comes back ten fold every time.

Feel free to give me a call for a free phone consultation or go on to our website at Divorce661.com where we have a wealth of free information.

California Divorce | What To Do Before You Hire An Attorney

Today we’re talking about how to save money with your Divorce.

Now what we’ve seen lately is a trend where people are hiring attorneys where I have to bet spending all their money and then before the Divorce is finished running out of money whether that was your only 5,000 you had for retainer and now that’s gone.

Or if you’ve spent $20-$30-$50 a $100,000 and now your money is all gone.

Regardless of what that point is where you ran out of money the problem is your case is unfinished and now you’re left high and dry without an attorney because they’re going to drop you as soon as you stopped making the payment and you’re going to have to go to trial on your own.

Now sadly in my opinion that’s when you need the attorney the most is when you’re going to trial.

And now you’re there to do it on your own. So here’s my recommendation and we try and get this videos in front of people before they hire an attorney.

We’re not saying attorneys are bad. We’re just saying they’re very costly.

Start your Divorce with us whether or not you think you may need an attorney or not because we can get so much of the paperwork done for such a much lower cost than what the attorneys going to charge you to get that point.

We found people have put a $5,000 retainer down. And all they’ve done is had the Divorce filed, served and their preliminary declaration of disclosure done.

So this is all paperwork. None of this requires an attorney or legal advice.

Letters had been written, emails have been exchanged and their $5,000 is gone.

And they’re not even halfway done with their Divorce. They haven’t even had a date in court.

So what I’m saying is use our service to file your case. We’ll complete the documents.

We’ll take them down to court. We’ll file it and take care of serving it just like an attorney does.

Let us work on your financial disclosures, your preliminary declaration disclosure, your income, your income and expense declaration, schedule of assets and debts and get all that filed and served.

We can even file motions on your behalf.  We can file motions, write declarations, get you court dates, mediation dates, facilitator dates.

We do everything a law firm does in that respect but for a much lower cost.

Then prior to hearing you can choose to represent yourself or at that point that’s when you hire the attorney.

Now you’ve got three courses all the way to the process and now the money can be better spent on them representing you in court and that’s the way we see things.

Well give me a call. Hopefully you watch this before you start your Divorce.

If not if you’re halfway through you can still get a lot of documentation done for you.

We serve all of California and we work on flat fee pricing. I’ll be happy to discuss your particular circumstance and give you quote for this specific service you are looking for.

661-281-0266 or you can also go to Divorce661.com for more information.

 

California Divorce Trial Preparation Service

We have been getting a lot of calls for what we call Trial Preparation document preparation related to trials for Divorce.

So if you’re going through Divorce and you don’t come to an agreement ultimately that will lead to trial.

Before trial you’re going to have to attend series of meetings, trials and conferences mandatory settlement conferences and then ultimately you’ll go trial.

Before each of these hearings there are various paperwork that is required to be done.

Generally speaking we’re talking about exhibit lists, witness lists.

We’re talking about trial briefs, mandatory settlement conference briefs and all of these takes certain level of expertise to provide and to complete.

Generally speaking you’ll need an attorney. Otherwise you can use services like ours especially if you’re representing yourself.

Or in many cases what we found people have run out of money prior to trial with their attorney, their attorney has dropped them.

And now they need a service like ours who can at a more affordable level provide these services of trial preparation.

So if you find yourself heading towards trial what’s going to happen is you’re going to get a sheet of paper from the court.

It’s going to give you specific instructions of what needs to be prepared and what needs to be filed and served, however many days prior to the hearing.

So if you’re going to need this service we do offer a Trial Prep Service as much as more affordable than attorney.

So please give us a call if you need any of those services.

Trial briefs, MSE briefs, exhibit lists or witness lists, anything else that has to do with trial prep usually we’ll have to do your final declaration of disclosure.

And there’s a lot of effort that goes into that.

So please give us a call and please give us a call with an advance time because it does take a long time to get the amount of paperwork the court request completed.

Feel free to give me a call for a free consultation 661-281-0266.

Hired Divorce Attorney | Out Of Money | Divorce Not Finished | California Divorce

I want to talk about something we’re seeing happened more frequently in an ongoing basis than we have in times passed.

I don’t know what is causing this but we are getting a lot of calls where people who have hired an attorney spent all their money, have gone bankrupt.

I mean we’ve seen very severe cases and their Divorce is still not done. And we’re not talking about major cases.

We’re just talking about your everyday case where the parties are in disagreement. And they’re bills are running $20,000 $40,000, $60,000, $80,000 and they’ve run out of money.

They’ve tapped out all their credit cards. They’ve spent their 401Ks.

They have done everything to kind of fight the other party and their Divorce isn’t done.

And what bothers me is they’ve spent all these money on attorneys. As soon as you stop giving them additional retainers or paying the bill they will drop you.

And if you’ve been through that you know exactly what I’m talking about.

If you’re watching this and that hasn’t happened that is what’s going to happen. As soon as you stop paying they’re going to drop you.

And if your case isn’t done the problem with that is you’re probably getting into the point where you need to go to trial.

And trial in my opinion is where you need the attorney the most. That’s where they’re going to stand up, argue on your behalf and try and get you the things that you want.

All the paperwork and things that were done up to that point whether it’d be over period of months or years when you see go on for years all these money has been spent paying $300, $400 or $500 an hour.

What we suggest is if you are going to get a Divorce and you know you’re going to need an attorney try and save some of your money upfront by using our service to file court documents.

And I can give you a perfect example. We’ve had many clients who’ve come to us say, ‘Tim I know I need an attorney but I don’t want to spend $400 $500 an hour to have them prep documents and get the case filed.’

So what they’ve done is they’ve come to us. We’ve filed their case, done their financial disclosures.

We’ve filed motions. We set court dates. We responded to motions.

We did everything and then a few weeks off from any hearings that they’re going to that’s when you hire an attorney if that’s what you need to do or you can simply represent yourself.

We’ve had clients saved thousands and thousands of dollars.

The work we’ve performed would have cost them their entire $5,000 retainer up to what we’ve done.

And then now they can save that money and it could be spent better by the attorney appearing in court and arguing on their behalf.

That’s just my take on things.

Feel free to give me a call for a free phone consultation whether you are about to be dropped or you’re getting ready to file for Divorce give me a call so we can save you some money.

You can also go to Divorce661.com for more information.

How To Find Los Angeles Divorce Case Online

Today we’re talking about a new feature of the Los Angeles County courts Superior Courts website has.

And that is now a party name search, so now as of about two weeks ago you can actually search for your case number by party name.

In the years passed the only way in Los Angeles County you could pull up a case summary is if you had the case number.

And I always thought that was a good idea. I had actually go down to the courthouse and searched on their computers if you want to search by name.

But you could have public access to online from your home computer if you had the case number you could see the case summary.

Now they have a feature called party name search. They do charge a fee of $4.75 per search.

So what this does this allows anyone to search by name and see if that person has filed for Divorce.

So that’s one way you can go as you can search by party name for that reason.

Another useful feature is if you have filed for Divorce and say you completed your Divorce many years ago and you lost your papers, you don’t have your case number.

One of the biggest issues is I don’t have my case number. I can’t run a case summary or order documents.

Now you can go online. This is for Los Angeles County.

You can go just Google search for party name search Los Angeles County Superior Court. They will bring you there and you can go when you enter your information.

You pay $4.75 fee and it will perform a search based on the criteria you gave it.

So if you need to get your case number so you can order court documents say for a past judgment or something along those lines those two is very useful and it’ll save you a trip to court.

We serve all of the California. Please give us a call, affordable flat fee pricing and we would work directly with your local court.

Free consultation if you give us a call. Or just go to our website at Divorce661.com for more information.

 

 

Determining California Spousal & Child Support DissoMaster Report

Today we’re going to talk about the Almighty DissoMaster. You may have heard of the term DissoMaster.

It is the software system most courts use to determine child support and spousal support numbers.

And I’m going to just kind of pull back the curtain on that so people understand what that is.

When you use our service the DissoMaster software, is the software that we have that obtain by the courts.

And we as part of our service we’ll calculate the amount of child support and spousal support if that’s, applicable in your case.

It’s simply a software program we punch in the amount of income of the parties. So let’s talk about spousal support first.

Spousal support takes in their account two things, your income and your spouse’s income.

And it will calculate a percentage amount of money payable monthly if that’s what you choose to do.

If you guys are asking that there’ll be spousal support order. Now with child support other factors are taking to an account.

On top of taking the income of the parties, it also takes in their account how much time each of you have the children.

So let me give you an example. If each of you makes $50,000 a year and you have 50-50 custody, you’re going to have an order for zero support because you guys make same amount of money and you have the children same amount of time.

Now if any of those increase or decrease on either side that’s going to fluctuate that number for instance.

If you both make $50,000 a year and you have your child say 75% of the time and your spouse has the 25% of time, well because the incomes are the same and you have more time with your child there’s going to be dollar amount ordered for child support on the DissoMaster because you have your child more time therefore the other without with the last time needs to help compensate for the cost of raising the child during the time you have them.

So I hope that makes sense on the DissoMaster. It’s part of the process when you use our service.

We’re going to talk more in the next couple days about spousal support in the jurisdictional spousal support and whether or not you want to have that included.

We’re also going to be talking further about child support in the videos to come.

California Divorce Financial Disclosures Requirements

If you still haven’t chosen to use our service no problem. We’re going to keep on going in letting you know how the Divorce process works.

So now we’re on in talking about the financial disclosure stage.

At this point we’ve already discussed what forms you need to file initially to get the case issued, how to get the case number issued, how to serve the documents properly.

And we talked about the six months cooling off period. Today we’re talking about the completion of your financial disclosures.

Look when you’re going through Divorce, if you have children Divorce is about children of course but other than that it’s about dividing up your assets and debts, it’s about money.

So the courts require that you and your spouse file and serve on each other an income and expense declaration and a schedule of assets and debts.

Essentially the schedule of assets and debts is where you’re going to list all your properties, separate in community.

The stuff you had before marriage, during marriage, after separation, you’re going to list your stuff, you had your spouse’s stuff whether in your name alone or their name alone whoever is going to keep it you’re just listing property.

You’re just listing stuff. So we’re talking about bank accounts. We’re talking about checking account.

We’re talking about credit cards, vehicles, pensions, you name it. If it’s an asset or a debt well regardless if whose name is in it’s something you should list.

The purpose for doing that is to disclose to your spouse and say ‘This is what I know to be of the property.’

So later on when it comes to making agreements as far as division of assets and debts you can sit down and say what’s going to be fair and equitable in the division of property.

The other form is the income and expense declaration.

The courts wants to know what the parties make in most cases for purposes of determining spousal support if that’s going to be requested or in determining child support if there are children involved.

The income and expense and schedule of assets and debts in an Uncontested Divorce are not served on our not filed with the court.

This is an information only type document that is served on your spouse.

There are some other corresponding documents that need to be served along with it. And then you file ingle document with the court that lets the courts know that you complied with this rule and you filed and served your income and expense, schedule of assets and debts on the party.

Now the rules of the court in California states that within 60 days of filing your initial case that you should have your financial disclosures complete.

I hope that makes sense. That would be your next step after serving your documents as for each of you to complete your financial disclosure and serve them on each other and file with the court the document indicating you have done so.

I’ll be happy to handle your case at any time.

California Divorce About The 6 Month Waiting Period

Today we’re talking about the six month cooling off period. By this time you may have filed your documents.

We’ve talked about that in video one. And then we’ve talked about the service of your documents.

And now we’re talking about the six months cooling off period.

So what that means is that the courts in California, there’s a law that does not allow you to finalize your Divorce until six months have passed.

Now the question we always get is when does that date start?

The answer is it’s not what you think. The six month process does not start when you file your documents.

Your six months process starts when you serve the documents.

So let’s say you file your documents on the 1st of the month and then not serve until the 20^th of the month, that’s when you get them into the hands of your spouse.

That’s the date that the courts jurisdiction of your case. And that’s the date that starts the six months process.

What that means is your official single status the soonest that can happen is six months after the date of service.

Now when you use our service we’ll generally, will get your case in two to three months.

Have it sign by the judge in your hands judgments complete, you’re totally Divorce and you’re just waiting for that six month mark to come to be officially single.

But in most cases when people are representing themselves because the complex nature of the paperwork and confusion and misunderstanding on the process of filling out the forms and filing court procedure normally your case will go much longer than six months just because of you’re unfamiliar with the actual documents on process.

So when you use our service we’ll have it done within two to three months and you’ll be waiting for that six months time period to elapse before it’s actual and official single status in your Divorce.

I hope that makes sense about the six month cooling off period in California.

 

How To Serve Your California Divorce Papers

Today we’re talking about the next step which is how to serve your Divorce paper.

So in the last video we talked about filing the initial documents to summons, petition, case cover sheet and a form called UCCJEA.

If you completed those correctly and you’ve now got those filed with the court you’ll have a case number issued.

You can’t file your documents until the case number has been issued.

So if you’ve already served your documents prior to filing you’re going to have to reserve them.

We see that happened quite a bit amongst folks trying to do their own paperwork. So if you filed your documents you’ll have a case number.

You would have paid your court fee or gotten your fee waiver at the court and now your documents are ready for service.

So there’s couple ways you can go about doing this. Ordinarily the initial divorce papers need to be personally served.

That means it needs to be served on your spouse by someone over the age of 18 other than yourself.

This could be a family friend. It could be anyone that’s not a party to the case. It could be the Marshalls, the Sheriffs.

You could hire a process server. There are lots of options for personal service. Just remember anyone other than yourself.

You can also do it by mail. This isn’t a widely known tactic but it’s one we utilize in our office in amicable cases where folks are trying to get through their Divorce case together, you can do it by mail.

So what we would do if you’re using our service is we would mail the file documents to your spouse.

And all you’ll have to do is sign the document indicating they received them, mail it back to us and we file that with the proof of service.

Now regardless of how you do this you need to file a proof of service with the court.

There’s nothing your spouse needs to sign when it’s done in person.

Whatever you have served them we’ll fill out the proof of service, they’ll give it back to you or if you’re using our service you give it back to us and we will take it through the courthouse and we will file the proof of service.

That’s would starts the sixth month cooling off period process. We’ll talk about that in the next video you’ll receive.

So by serve it by mail you can do it and it has to be someone other than you. You cannot be the one that mails it to him.

You’ll have to have again some neutral third party over 18 not yourself mail the documents and go through this process which is called Notice of Acknowledgement of Receipt which we use because it saves money.

It saves time. It keeps other people friends and family from having to be involved in your case.

And you don’t have to have a process server going throw something in your spouse’s face which doesn’t make most people happy.

So I hope that will make sense on the process of service once your documents are filed.

Please give us a call if you’d like our assistance. I appreciate you watch this video.

I hope you find that helpful and informational.

 

How California Divorce Mediation Works

I want to let you know on this video that some people call us because we’re just a Paralegal Firm.

They know we can’t give legal advice or represent them in court.

So we usually will work with people who have Amicable cases or somewhat amicable.

I want to let you know you don’t have to have all your agreements in place to use our services and here’s why.

The question becomes ‘Tim, what happens if we start using your service and we run into a little difficulty in coming up with the agreements and we get stuck?’

And it does happened. So what we do is we would refer you out to a third party Mediation Service.

It’s someone that we worked with closely who’s also has an affordable business of where they can sit down with you and help you mediate your issues whether it’d be one issue such as spousal support or maybe you guys are in agreement on anything.

That’s what the Mediation is for. They’ll help you establish a line of communication if you’re not communicating well.

And then they’ll help you come up with the agreements on foundation of what’s fair.

Mediation when you have issues or unable to come to decisions on your own regarding the terms of your Divorce Mediation is a fantastic solution.

It keeps the parties talking and you guys will come up with the best. The decisions will be the best interest for both of you with no real winners or losers.

So yes you can use our service even if you don’t have agreements in place.

Part of the process is Mediation if that’s not the case if you’re unable to come up with agreements on your own.

So just keep that in mind. I want to share that with you because a lot of people are unaware that Mediation Services exist.

I love to hear from you.