Chatsworth Divorce Court | How Long Does Divorce Process Take?

Today, we’re talking about how long does the divorce process takes when you’re going through a divorce in Chatsworth at the Chatsworth Courthouse?

And honestly it’s no different in anywhere in LA County because Family Law has now moved to Chatsworth.

A lot of people are searching for assistance at the Chatsworth Courthouse. So this is the way of getting in front of people.

So Divorce six months, I’m sure you’ve heard California has what’s called a cooling off period.

It takes six months before your Divorce can be finalized.

The best way to look at it is six months is the soonest your Divorce can be finalize.

Now the six months that clock starts ticking at the date of service. So when you file your divorce case it doesn’t matter.

Once you serve your initial papers on your spouse that will starts the clock.

Moving forward, you can get all your paperwork done within that six months period.

If you like you can get it done as fast as 3 days after service and submit your entire Divorce case to the court.

But you don’t have to wait up to six months to submit your case. And a lot of people have that misconception.

They file for Divorce. They serve their Divorce. And then they’ll wait six months to turn everything in.

If you do that you’re going to delay your Divorce case by about two to three months because the courts have a delay when you submit that final paperwork to the court.

Then you’re going to wait an additional two to three months just because you’re so busy in reviewing those final documents. There’s going to be a delay.

So what we do if you use our service which we obviously encourage you to do is we will get your divorce case as soon as 30 days.

Submit it to the court as quickly as we can. And around two to three months mark we submit it to the court.

And that takes them that two to three months to complete and we’ll have your divorce case usually done before that six months even comes around.

And then the date of your Divorce will be a future date because we got your Divorce case done so quickly.

Okay, so, I just want to make sure you guys understand that you don’t have to wait up to six months.

We’ve seen that quite a bit. Call us. We love to help you with our Full Service Divorce process.

We’ll take care of everything, forms, filing with the court, working with both parties, helping you mediate the case and get through this your Divorce as complete as possible.

We have all the courts forms and software attorneys and the courts have. And we can definitely assist you with your Divorce in Chatsworth.

Please give us a call. Free phone consultation at 661-281-0266.

Is California Spousal Support Or Alimony Tax Deductible

We’re not Divorce attorneys. We’re not Tax Accountants or Tax Lawyers or anything like that. So don’t consider any of these advices.

But we are going to be providing information today from the Franchise Tax Board specifically about issues of alimony and spousal support in California.

And I want to provide that information in video format so it’s more easily found. And today’s video is about can I deduct alimony paid?

Can I deduct alimony or spousal support?

So when you’re making the payments to your spouse for alimony or spousal support it can be a tax deduction for you.

So let’s talk about what the Franchise Tax Board says specifically about that. So this is titled can I deduct alimony paid?

Says the law requires alimony payments to be reported as income by the recipients.

So your spouse would have to report the income she receives or he receives as alimony or spousal support in California.

The person who pays the alimony may take a deduction for these payments. So the payors spouse payee or payor, I forget how that works the payors spouse will deduct or can deduct the spousal support or alimony payments.

And the person receiving has to report that as income. Alimony payments you make are deductibles.

So that’s the advantage here, if all of the following requirements are met.

So, here’s the requirements to be able to take that tax deduction or included as income.

Number one, you pay in case, checks or money orders.

Number two, the divorce or separation instrument does not say that the payment is not alimony.

Let me read that again. The divorce or separation instrument does not say that the payment is not alimony.

Okay, so it has to say a specifically alimony. God, I love how they write this.

Number three, you and your former spouse are not members of the same household when you make the payment.

Okay, that’s interesting. So if you’re a lot of my clients going through divorce are still living in the same house, so, if that’s the case according to this if you’re living with your spouse through the divorce and you’re paying alimony or spousal support that would not qualify you to do this.

Number four, you have no liability to make any payment after the death of your spouse of former spouse.

Number five, your payment is not treated as child support. So that’s obvious.

Child support is not tax deductible. Alimony is, if you meet these five criteria.

And one criteria, because one of the other criteria that they left out is it’s on here but it’s not under this particular question is there has to be a court order in place for that spousal support or alimony payment.

So you can go back and look at that video in this series. So that’s what has to be in place.

That has to be the requirements if you’re going to deduct alimony or spousal support that you pay in California.

Tim Blankenship specializing in California Divorce, I hope this video was helpful.

Please give us a call for a free consultation 661-281-0266 specializing in California Divorce anywhere in California.

 

Divorce Mediation Service Chatsworth | Chatsworth Divorce Service

Today, I want to talk about Divorce Mediation in Chatsworth.

So if you live in the jurisdiction of the Chatsworth Courthouse for your Divorce that’s anywhere in most of the Northern part of the San Fernando Valley and Santa Clarita Valleys, you’ll be filing in the Chatsworth Courthouse.

And I want to talk to you about some of your options when it comes to Divorce and specifically mediation in those cases.

So when you go through Divorce and if you have an amicable case or it’s starting off amicable that’s great.

You can get through your Divorce. You can even use a service like ours in most cases for any Divorce circumstance.

And we can help prepare your forms and get you through the court process and complete your Divorce case with no additional third party services.

But sometimes where the parties have disagreements or they’re unable to come to an agreement on certain areas.

Be it a single issue or multiple issues Divorce Mediation can be very helpful.

What mediation does is there are different varities of mediation. It could be a solo mediator helping you guys just with issues of communication.

It could be a co-mediation where you have an attorney or maybe two attorneys in a room sitting there and helping you guys work through your issues.

But Divorce Mediation it comes in different types of mediators. I guess that is what I want you to know.

And each type of different mediator it really depends on your circumstances.

Some of our clients just have difficulty in communicating with their spouse.

And they need someone to be there to provide let’s say if environment for communication, so, they can get through these agreements and don’t have to spend the money on costs of the attorneys.

Sometimes you may have a super complicated case and you need an attorney in the room, that’s a Mediator Attorney.

They can help you with your divorce and answer legal questions as you guys are going through mediation.

But regardless before mediation you don’t have to have your all answers put together before you file for divorce.

What we encourage folks to do is to give us a call so we can get your Divorce case started.

Most people don’t understand that you don’t have to have all your agreements in place.

In fact, to file for Divorce you only need a very limited amount of information.

It’s mostly statistical in nature as far as the party information and the children’s name and so forth.

But you don’t have to have any agreements or property known or disclosed at that time to get the case filed.

In some very broader point of information and what we encourage is get people file their case and get it serve so you start the clock on the sixth month divorce process.

So I hope that was helpful regarding mediation.

If you want to get your divorce case started, give us a call.

We’ll be happy to assist with preparing and filing your Divorce case at the Chatsworth Courthouse.

Tim Blankenship Divorce661.com or give me a call at 661-281-0266 for a free phone consultation.

What Does Not Qualify As Alimony Payments For Tax Deductibility

Today, we’re talking about alimony and spousal support in California. And specifically this video is about what types of payments do not qualify as alimony.

Doing a series of videos where I found a publication put up by the Franchise Tax Board that’s talking about somebody’s specifics.

They’re interesting because they go the effective tax as opposed to you know what it is necessarily but how certain items of spousal support and alimony and what alimony is considered to be and what they’re not.

And this particular and types of alimony payments that do not qualify as alimony and the reason that’s important because alimony payments are tax deductible.

So if it’s established in a different way it wouldn’t be tax deductible. And I want to give you what the Franchise Tax Board is saying would not qualify as alimony therefore would not be tax deductible.

Property settlement payments even if required by the divorce to clear other instrument will agree.

So this is just a distribution of property. Let’s say you guys split up an assets sold the house and so forth that from written this that perhaps would not be considered alimony.

Of course, you don’t want to talk to tax advisors talk to an attorney about the specifics of this.

We’re not giving tax advice or legal advice. We’re just trying to get these informations out there more easily readable and findable way.

Retirement benefits that the other spouse’s entitled to received based on division of a community property.

Okay so what that I’m referring to is if let’s say the working spouse we have two spouses one that’s working, one is not working.

The one whose working let’s say they have created a $100,000 pension. The pension because it’s community property according to the Franchise Tax Board would be divided.

Let’s say they’re married 10 years. They’re in the pension system 10 years so it can be divided 50-50.

That’s $50,000 that, that spouse would receive as a distribution from this community property asset would not be considered alimony.

It will just be a division of a community asset. So that $50,000 wouldn’t be tax deductible and it wouldn’t be counted as alimony for the Franchise Tax Board.

Any voluntary payments made before they are required by Divorce Decree or written agreement.

I will read that again, any voluntary payments made before they are required by a Divorce Decree or written agreement.

So this is interesting. I made you a separate video all together on these.

So without a court order there is no order. Therefore you can’t get the benefit of the alimony.

So if you are going through divorce and you are you set let’s say you’ve separated and you’re living in a separate residence but you’re giving your spouse money on a monthly basis which a lot of people do.

And it’s recommended of course for variety of reasons but not the topic of this discussion.

Any money you’re giving your spouse, so, let’s say you’re separated, you’re giving your spouse a $1,000 a week or $4,000 a month you cannot get a credit for that.

So you can’t deduct that off your taxes at the end of the tax year because there’s no court order. You need to get what’s called a temporary order.

So you’ll have a court order so from this date forward you’re paying these much you can always amend that in the final judgment but you’re not going to get accredit for those nor you’ll be able to deduct that.

So the benefit or the idea would be to get a temporary order as soon as possible. So it is tax advantageous to you.

And I am going to do a separate video right after this one that talks specifically about that because it’s very important.

And then the last one they have here is child support payments. Child support payments are not alimony.

Obviously, they’re not spousal support. And they’re also not tax deductible nor does the other party receiving it have to claim it is as income.

Tim Blankenship with Divorce661.com, we specialize in California Divorce. I hope this information was helpful.

Please call us if you like us to help you with your divorce in California. We work out flat fee pricing.

I’d be happy to take care of that for you. The number is 661-281-0266.

Feel free to give me a call for a free consultation.

Chatsworth Pension Division QDRO Preparation Service Chatsworth CA

Today, we’re talking to the folks in Chatsworth, California about QDRO Prep Service.

QDRO stands for Qualified Domestic Relation Order otherwise know as a QDRO or QDRO.

This essentially is something you will need to prepare or have prepared if you’re going through a Divorce in Chatsworth and you need to divide your pension, 401K, 403 (b) and many other investment type investments.

If you contact your pension company or 401K 403 (b), etc and you’re going through a divorce, ask them if you need a QDRO or Qualified Domestic Relation Order to divide that specific investment.

If you do you’re going to need a service to provide that QDRO Prep Service. It’s something that runs along side your divorce.

It’s something you can do after your divorce but if you’re going to divide the pension it needs to be noted in your judgment.

And it has to be noted specifically in your judgment. And then you’re going to need a service like ours to prepare the QDRO.

Now the reason I did this video is we are one of the most affordable QDRO Prep Services.

Attorneys charge upwards of $2,000 for the same service we provide. We do the exact same service that the attorneys would do.

So if you’re looking to have a QDRO Prepared for your Divorce case in Chatsworth or anywhere in California, feel free to give us a call.

I’ll be happy to talk about the specifics of the QDRO Prep Process as far as preparing the jointers and serving the pension company, filing it with the court, drafting the QDRO language and then getting that pension divided for you.

My name is Tim Blankenship specializing in California Divorce or you can go to Divorce661.com for more information or feel free to give me a call at 661-281-0266.

Must Have Order To Deduct California Spousal Support Payments

Today, we’re talking about alimony and spousal support in California and specifically at the State of California Franchise Tax Board put out a publication talking about spousal support and alimony.

And we’re going over a lot of the questions getting this recorded on video so folks have a better understanding of how this works.

And we just shot a video and it was talking about what types of payments do not qualify as alimony.

I went through three or four things the Franchise Tax Board talked about here. And one of them was this that does not qualified as alimony.

Any voluntary payments made before they are written by a Divorce Decree or written agreement.

So right now we handle about 50 divorce cases a month. We do a high volume because we have affordable flat fees.

And we do really great services for folks taking care of the entire process for them from start to finish anywhere in California.

So we see a lot of scenarios of Divorce and what a lot of people do is they file for divorce.

They will move out or not maybe they’ll stay in the residence you know just for financial reasons but they are paying, they’ll do one of two things.

They either the one maintaining the status quo and continue to pay the bills and keep everything going as it was until they finally gets to the point where they divide up their property and come up with spousal support number if that’s the case.

Or let’s say one party moves out and let’s say the spouse that was working and let’s say the other spouse wasn’t they start giving a couple thousand dollars a month or whatever is appropriate in their case.

They start paying an amount to be considered as spousal support and child support.

Well, from what it says that would be considered as voluntary payment and it would not be qualified as alimony or spousal support in California.

And the reason that’s important to note is if you are paying money and there’s no court order and does not considered alimony it’s therefore not tax deductable.

And that’s one of the biggest things with alimony is you can deduct that from your taxes.

So if you paid $2,000 a month for alimony and you have a court order that says so then you can deduct those at the end of the year.

And your spouse receiving the spousal support would have to include that as income and they will be the ones paying the tax on that.

Now the way you can serve estimation this doesn’t, you’re not giving that tax advantage is as soon as you separate call us we can put together what’s called the Stipulation and Order.

So if you’re going to pay a thousand a month or whatever that number is, say, ‘Tim I’m paying a thousand a month.’

The divorce isn’t finalized which could take 6-8-12 months depending on how fast you move through the process.

You’re going to want to get some temporary orders immediately especially regarding alimony so you can get that tax advantage.

So you’re not just writing checks that you’re not going to be able to get any credit for. So this was right directly from the Franchise Tax Board.

We’re not tax advisers. We’re not giving tax advice or legal advice but I want to get this out there because this is how the franchise tax board and the tax treats alimony.

So get that court order as soon as possible so you could take advantage of it’ll be considered of those payments be considered as spousal support and alimony.

Tim Blankenship Divorce661.com, we can put an order together for you as soon as 24 hours.

We also can handle your entire divorce case anywhere in California.

Examples Of Alimony & Spousal Support California Divorce

Today, we’re answering the question what are examples of alimony payments and this is coming directly from the franchise tax board.

I found interesting publication they put out where they answered maybe 12 questions.

It was hard for me to find so I want to get this out on video because it gives and it talks about alimony and spousal support in California from a tax prospective.

So in this particular case they want to describe what other example of alimony payments might be because a typical alimony or spousal support payment is one party paying money, so cash, writing a check, transferring money from one party to the other.

In this they’re saying you don’t necessary have to have a cash transferred. There don’t have to be cash going from one party you know one spouse to the next.

That there can be in this could be payments made to a third party can be considered alimony.

Indirect alimony may include cash payments through a third party to satisfy the obligations of a former spouse such as to provide a residence for a former spouse.

For example rent, mortgage, utilities etc., medical costs payments or other such expenses incurred by the payors former spouse.

So those are ways that you can pay spousal support instead of just having a money payment for alimony or spousal support.

You could pay your spouse’s rent. You could pay your spouse mortgage or portion there of. You could pay the mortgage if and plus alimony or spousal support and that all can be considered spousal support.

And from reading the publication the reason you may want other payments being handled as spousal support has asked this publication from the franchise tax board indicates alimony is tax deductible for the payors spouse and it has to be taxable E-VAT.

So that’s to include in their taxes if you’re receivingspousal support. So the example in this case is if you are a spouse saying ‘Oh why I didn’t know I could pay the rent. Let me pay the rent.’

If you don’t write that up as a spousal support order then you cannot deduct the amount you’re paying for rent.

Let me just make sure that’s clear. If you decide in your divorce, you’re going to pay the mortgage let’s say of your spouse and its $2,000 a month and that’s your agreement.

You guys signed the judgment you’re done and you write a check and you pay the mortgage payment every month, that’s fine.

You know in fact it’ll probably you may even want to work out that you get the mortgage deduction, the interest deduction on that.

But let’s say you didn’t? If you pay $2,000 a month for the house its $24,000 a year you’re not going to be able to deduct that payment if it’s not included as spousal support or alimony.

So being at the franchise tax board says you can use or have this described as alimony if you write it up that way that $2000 you’re paying can be considered as spousal support or alimony which is the same thing.

And you can get that tax deduction when you go to file taxes. So you could find this information on the franchise tech support website.

It was difficult to find it. I definitely want to get this out in video and we’re going to do several more about spousal support and alimony and some of the tax implications going right off the franchise tax board publications.

Tim Blankenship specializing in California Divorce, I hope this was helpful.

Feel free to call me for a free consultation. We handle divorce cases all throughout California 661-281-0266.

 

What Is Alimony | What Is Spousal Support | California Divorce

Today, we’re talking about alimony otherwise known as spousal support more commonly known as spousal support in California.

And I’m taking this information directly from the franchise tax board as well because I want to give folks some information about spousal support.

A little bit of how it works including what the franchise tax board says about how they treat spousal support.

So this video essentially what is alimony and this is what the term has been known as within the courts and those of us in the business.

It’s more frequently referred to as spousal support.

So spousal support where alimony essentially is one spouse paying to another alimony or set amount of money on a monthly basis or by monthly basis or however you want to set that up where maybe the higher wage earner during the marriage is assisting the other party with living expenses and so forth because of a difference in incomes of the parties.

So this could be where one party earns a substantial more income than the other party.

Let us help offset and make it more fair because he had let’s say a non working spouse and then the bread winner through the marriage is they both had realized the benefits of that income.

If they were to divorce and go their separate ways and there’ll be no spousal support obviously the spouse who was not working would have no income whatsoever.

And perhaps they raised the children and so forth and so they shouldn’t be essentially set off with no income just because they didn’t work.

And the courts we’re not lawyers here, we’re not here to give legal advice. Keep that in mind.

But just from what we see keep in mind that the person shouldn’t be punished because they didn’t work and now they have no money.

So this is to help alimony payments to help with that person getting on their feet. Give them time to maybe get educated, go back to school or go back to work and then slowly get on their feet.

And there’s a lot that goes in this spousal support and alimony and how these amounts are determined.  I don’t want to get too deep in to that.

This was just to kind of give you a brief overview of what spousal support or alimony is.

So you know moving forward as far as your right is concerned that’s a whole different story whether you can get it or not but this video is just to discuss what alimony is.

It’s quite simple. It’s just one party paying to the other spouse an amount of money for a specific duration of time for a specific amount.

Tim Blankenship, Divorce661.com specializing in affordable California Divorce.

Which Los Angeles Divorce Court Do I File In?

Today, I want to talk to you about how the courts jurisdiction works for Los Angeles County specifically in how they divide up their branch courts and how you can figure out what court you need to file in.

So the main brain branch of the Los Angeles Superior Court is at Central. So it’s the Central Division in downtown LA.

That’s the main courthouse for the county of Los Angeles. So regardless of where you live in LA County as far as North in Palmdale and Lancaster as far as South at Long Beach as far as East is let’s say Pomona and as far West as LA County goes so West Hills, West Valley area all of you can find out in the Central Courthouse.

That is the main court. Now what the courts have done for convenience over the years as they have branch courts.

So there are courts in San Fernando branch court in Burbank, in Van Nuys etc. Long Beach.

These are branch courts that are there just for each of you. So you don’t have to drive as far to file your divorce case.

So I want to explain how jurisdiction works. So essentially if you’re living close to that courthouse most likely that’s going to be your court.

But we have is client call us saying they wanted to file, they basically send over the paperwork and said we live in X City, but we want to file in the Burbank because one of the spouses work in Burbank.

So it would have been convenient for them to go to the Burbank Courthouse.

The thing here is though have they attempted this on their own which they didn’t they hired us to assist them with their divorce but had they gone to the courthouse they want to go to.

In this case they want to go to Burbank to file their case but they didn’t live within the jurisdiction.

They would simply reject their petition for divorce and then send them to the correct courthouse to file which in this case if you live in Burbank you don’t have to go to Pasadena so you could have filed in Pasadena or in Central.

Part of the easiest way to figure out which court to file is you just give us a call. We can check and see based on your zip code where you should file your case locally.

So go ahead and give us a call for free phone consultation, I’ll be happy to prepare your Divorce case for you 661-281-0266.