Service At Los Angeles Divorce Courts Likely To Worsen

The courts have reported that there will be further court closures, additional restructuring and another round of layoffs which will impact over 500 Court employees in the next few months.

Those of us in the industry are already starting to feel the impact. We are starting to have much longer delays in getting documents filed with the court than we have in the past.

Normally, we could file a new divorce case by mail on a Monday and have the filed copies back the same week. The last case we filed just came back from the court, and we sent it to them 10 days ago.

It makes me wonder what the court is doing with the documents we mail in. I know the Post Office is getting the mail there the next day, so are the forms just sitting there for over a week before the clerk decides to stamp them and mail them back to me?

I have had to make sure I am aware of the slower service of the courts when letting my clients know when they can expect their cases filed.

This will certainly have an impact on when you can expect to have your final judgment forms signed off by the judge. Currently, the courts are taking up to 3 months to sign off on judgments. This could easily go into the 4 to 5 month range.

The other area we will see some issues is with how long it will take to get a hearing when filing a request for order from the court. Most court are running approximately 45 to 60 days before you can get in front of a judge. This will most likely be increase as well.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation service that specializes in divorce in Los Angeles County. Please give us a call if you need assistance with completing your divorce case.