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.