Should I Complete My California Divorce On My Own

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Should I Complete My California Divorce On My Own

Today I want to answer the question, of whether or not you should do your own divorce or not.

So let me first start by saying it’s completely possible for you to do your divorce on your own.

It’s just going to come down to a couple of factors. Do you have the time to invest to attempt to learn the process of filling out all the forms, all the nuances as far as what forms need to be filed and served, and including preparing the filed judgment, which can be twenty-five to thirty pages long?

So really you have to just take into consideration if you have the time to invest in doing that and I get this all the time have people call and they’ll say “Tim, I just don’t have the money to pay your fee.” and I’ll say “Okay, well, you have an option: Do you have more time than money or more money than time?”

– And that’s going to be the first question you should ask yourself.

If you’re not working or you’re unemployed you obviously have more time than money. So you’re probably going to want to do this on your own in most cases because you have the time to invest to sit at a computer, go down to the court self-help centers, and spend several hours in there for a couple of days trying to get this  paperwork done.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be confusing, you’re not going to like it, but that may be your option if you don’t have the funds to get professional services such as ours to help with the divorce.

The next thing you want to consider is how far in the process are you going to get before you ask for help?

The divorce process starts off pretty easy. There are only a couple of forms you need to fill out to file and get a case number.

The summons, the petition, the case cover sheet, if you have children then you need a declaration regarding children you have to complete, and you can get a case number, and those aren’t too tough to fill out; but then it gets tougher as you go.

The next step is doing your financial disclosures, and people have lots of questions on how to complete those, and they have trouble completing those, and even if you get through that, the third and hardest part, and I break this into phases, that’s why I say, one, two, and three.

This third part is completing your judgment which wraps up all the agreements of your divorce.  That can be twenty-five pages long. And there’s lots of check boxes; and fill-in the blanks; and the information you have to include; and property declarations; and checklists to watch out for; and people make mistakes on that.

So if you have the money, we recommend you, use our services right from the get-go.

Because what we find are people that have started the process, and got to the process to a certain degree.

We always have to go back and fix things, and amend certain forms.

In addition, when you come to us, you’ve wasted so much time trying to fill out the initial paperwork, to your disclosures.

I have some people that have gone all the way through as to have made the judgment. Had it rejected and then came to us, and unfortunately there is so much, there is actually more work to do cause we had to correct forms, amend documents, refill out forms, some form hadn’t been done in a while so we had to redo it for them.

So they didn’t save any money by trying to get through the process.

‘Cause it was just as much work or more to work to complete for them. Even though they have done so much of the paperwork, and spend so much of their time.

My recommendation is if you have more time than money. Of course, you’re going to have to do it yourself, but if you have the money, we recommend you start with us right from the beginning.

Don’t attempt to do this yourself, because it’s going to cost you the same regardless of where you’re at in the process when you come to us.

‘Cause we’re going to have to fix the documents that you did. Not because you don’t know what you’re doing, well, yes, it is because you don’t know what you’re doing.

What I wanted to say is not because you’re not smart enough to do it. It’s just that it’s very confusing to do.

So please give us a call, we’d love to help you out with your divorce and if you’re in California – 661-281-0266.

We’re headquartered in Santa Clarita which is northern Los Angeles County, and we do serve all the courts in California.

I’m looking forward to talking to you 661-281-0266. Our main website has tons of information and that is divorce661.com.

Thanks!

Should You Use A Divorce Self Help Book | California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Should You Use A Divorce Self Help Book | California Divorce

Today I want to talk to you about whether or not it’s a good idea to use a divorce self-help book.

I recently went to the library and I wanted to see what these publishers were putting out there and what I found out it they’re all pretty much the same thing.

There’s, you know, different publishers, different attorneys, or group of attorneys writing about divorce, and this is what you can find in a self-help book and this is why I think divorce self-help books are pretty much worthless.

So when you open up the books, you’re going to get maybe a chapter or two of general law and things related to divorce and after that it’s going to go into how to prepare your actual forms.

Now it’s kind of laughable.

I’ve been into this divorce service for several years now, and I know the ins and outs of all the forms and so forth.

And I was confused in looking at the different pages that showed say a summons and basically what it had is it had the page over here with all the instructions and then over here it had a copy of the divorce form.

Let’s say it’s the petition for instance, and it had arrows going to each line and back-and-forth, it looked like a geometry math problem with lines going back-and-forth if this then that, go back to C if you checked, marked box D, then skip E through F.

I mean it was really confusing; and I didn’t get a whole lot out of it; and I really believed that these books are not necessarily there to help you.

I mean, of course, if you took the time and went through it you could probably fill out some of your divorce forms, they’re probably not going to be accurate because the one thing that they don’t do is they don’t let you know about the local forms.

So you can certainly get a California self-help divorce book but it’s not going to know if you’re in LA County, or San Bernardino County or where in California you are.

And there are always local forms that you need to be aware of and the process is a little bit different from each county, and you also need to be aware of that.

So what I really feel these books are designed to do are to thoroughly confuse you cause that’s what it did to me.

And I’m in the business and they are hoping that you will call them each book lets you know that they’re an attorney or a group of attorneys and there’s help you could get by calling them.

So what they’re, I think, they’re trying to achieve is having you call them and then turn you into an actual client for their law firm by confusing you through the divorce book.

I wrote a blog on this and I’m going to insert this video in the blog and you can learn more about a better way of getting through a divorce.

I’ve done over a hundred and thirty or hundred and fifty videos so far about divorce; I’ve written over a thousand different articles on divorce.

I think that’s a much better way of getting through the divorce process, if you’re intending to do it completely on your own without assistance.

Of course, if you would like some assistance in California we’d be happy to help you out, but you can watch a video, you can watch, listen to podcasts we have done, you can read our blogs.

I think that’s a much better way of learning how to complete the divorce process than reading any book that is probably out-dated by the time it actually hits the bookshelves.

This is Tim with divorce661.com. If you have any questions, please give me a call at 661-281-0266, and you can always get more information off our website at divorce661.com.

Thanks!

Filed For Divorce But Now Reconciling | What To Do | California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Filed For Divorce But Now Reconciling | What To Do | California Divorce

Today, I wanted to talk to you about your options if you filed for divorce and then later you want to reconcile your divorce or you want to take a little extra time to work things out and see if maybe you filed for divorce a little too soon.

So, I had two clients, probably in the last month, where this has happened to.

The first one you know had a rough week and came in filed for divorce, we filed the paperwork, and then essentially they wanted to hold off and see if things would work out.

So they spent a couple of weeks, maybe a month, waiting to serve their paperwork before doing so just to give it some time, and that’s certainly one option.

Once the paperwork has been filed, you can just hold it, you don’t have to serve it right away.

Just know, that if you’re in Los Angeles County, what the courts have started doing is if you have not served the paperwork within about sixty days they will set a hearing and have you come into court to explain what’s going on.

Now here is the problem with that, if you filed for divorce and didn’t serve your spouse, and then they mail something to your house from the courts saying, you haven’t served your divorce paperwork yet.

You can see how that could be a problem, your spouse getting something like that in the mail, unknowingly to you, that they got the mail and find out from the court that you had filed for divorce.

So you have to watch out for that.

The second option, and this really depends, is to just not serve the paperwork right away but have them sign a notice of acknowledgement of receipt.

What you can do is, and this is what happened in the second case. We filed for divorce, I mailed the paperwork out to a spouse, and then they said “You know what? We want to kind of hold off and see if we can work things out.” –which is great.

Of course that’s why there’s that six-month cooling off period, the courts want you to take that time to possibly reconcile your divorce or your marriage rather.

So what I advise this family is for them to not fill out any of the paperwork just hold on to it and you know you can always serve it later.

The other option is to just back-date the day the paperwork was received and just not sign it yet.

So what that means, is they can use the notes of acknowledgement receipt, sign it and date it for the day it is received so it’s back dated to that six-month date.

And they can hold it and if the court sets a hearing.

Then all they have to do is file that notice of acknowledgement and receipt with the proof of service and they won’t have to go to court for that case management conference; or they can go to the hearing and simply ask for the case to be dismissed if they’re going to continue on with their marriage.

Just keep in mind if you do dismiss the case and the divorce and you need to later re-file, you’re going to have to repay the filing fee.

So if you’re not a hundred percent sure, go ahead and have the person served, and then just wait.

There’s not going to be a rush to complete any paperwork after that point in most cases, and then later, six months, eight months down the road you can always dismiss the case then.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to give me a call.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

You can reach me direct at 661-281-0266.

Thanks!

How To Combine Divorce Cases By Stipulation | Los Angeles County Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How To Combine Divorce Cases By Stipulation | Los Angeles County Divorce

We’re talking about how to complete a stipulation when two petitions are filed in a divorce case.

I just did a video on what happens when two petitions are filed, and the answer was you have to treat one as the response.

Well, you have to complete a stipulation and file that with the courts, so that second petition is counted as the response.

So let me just back-up briefly, both of you filed a petition within days of each other, let’s say you have two open cases, you need to choose one as a lead case.

Generally speaking, you’re going to chase the first case that was opened, and you’re going to ask the court to use case B, the second case that was filed, as the, and treat that petition in that second case as the actual response to the first case, that way you have a single case in your situation.

So that said, what you need to do is draw up a stipulation and submit that to the court.

The stipulation, essentially, will say, we request the court, allow case A that was filed on this date to be the lead case and that case B that was filed on this date, this petition be treated as the response to case A.

Both of you will sign it, you’ll submit it to the court and wait for the judge to sign it, and therefore your second petition will be counted as a response.

Now the reason that’s been official, is because if you filed a petition, you pay the filing fee, both of you did.

If you file another response to a case that doesn’t have a response filed, you’re going to have to pay a filing fee again. That’s why you need to complete the stipulation, to have your second, your petition, to, not the lead case, you have the lead case, leave it alone.

Have your petition in the secondary case be treated as a response that way the filing fee and the petition you filed can be treated as a response.

If you have any questions about that, please feel free to give me a call, 661-281-0266.

You can always get more information from our website at divorce661.com.

We handle divorce cases in all of Los Angeles County.

Thanks!

Both Parties Filed For Divorce | What Do You Do | California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Both Parties Filed For Divorce | What Do You Do | California Divorce

Today I’m going to talk to you about what to do if there are two petitions filed in your case.

Meaning, you filed for divorce, and your spouse filed for divorce, separately, several days, weeks, months apart, how to correct that; and number two, what to do if neither party has been served.

I’m going to explain the situation of the caller that I just hung up the phone with.

So here’s the situation, over a year ago, the parties had attorneys, they both filed for divorce, so they both filed a petition within days of each other, and what happened was now this is a year later, neither party was ever served the petition because they both filed petitions.

Obviously the attorneys thought that one would be considered a response, but that’s not how it works.

If you want to, if both parties file a petition, what needs to happen to correct that is you need to draw up a stipulation that says case A is going to be the lead case and case B is going to be, please consider case B as the response to case A, and then you submit that to the court, the judge would sign it, and there you have a response and that response would count as the date of service.

The other way that you can correct this, now in this particular circumstance the problem here was that a year has gone by, they’d been to court, they’d been to hearings but because no one was ever sure, because there was never a response filed in either of the cases, the courts have not retained jurisdiction over them as far as filing the judgments.

We’re talking about that six-month waiting period has not even started even though this has been going on for over a year.

So to fix this, the fastest way would be to get one of the parties served. What I’d recommend is, whoever filed the case first, take that case, have that filed on your spouse.

Fill out a proof of service. Of course you need to follow the rules of proof of service; I’ve done a video on that so you can look for that video next.

Have that person served file the proof of service with the court. That will start the six-month clock, even though years already gone by, you need to start that clock.

The next thing you need to do is complete the stipulation regarding having case B as the response to case A if you need assistance with that, I’ve done another video on that as well: How To Draw Up A Stipulation To Have The Second Case Be The Response To The First Case.

So watch out for that, make sure that the proof of service has been filed; make sure the clock has started ticking.

What’s going to happen to these folks is even though they walked into court thinking everything was ready to go to finish their case and file the judgment, they found out that literally they had to start from day one as far as the six-month clock is concerned.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

For more information, please give me a call, 661-281-0266.

We handle divorce cases all throughout Los Angeles County. I look forward to helping you if you need our assistance.

Talk to you soon!

Beware of Legal Services at San Fernando Courthouse

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Beware of Legal Services at San Fernando Courthouse

Today I wanted to talk about some interesting things that are happening down at the San Fernando courthouse.

This is in regards to legal services standing around the courthouse and offering their services to folks that are representing themselves.

I kind of found out about this accidentally but I found out that a couple of clients call me that I sent down to, you know, to a hearing perhaps or to talk to a facilitator, coordinately we prepared their divorce paper for them and they had to go down there for some specific reason.

Generally, that’s not the case but these folks going down there, each of them started calling me and this started happening this week, called me and said, “Tim, this is very helpful paralegal outside the court.”.

Also said that she would be happy to review our paper work and then they kind of shuttled them over to an office nearby the courthouse.

And they called me after they had met with these folks and what they’re doing is essentially a legal services company, out there, as, I guess, a business model, out there standing on the sidewalk and trying to secure business for their legal services business, and helping prepare their paperwork.

I guess that’s not necessarily an illegal thing, they are on a public sidewalk, I don’t know if it’s a very professional way of obtaining business but the interesting thing is that if you’re one of my clients and you’re approached by one of these folks, what I’m hearing them say is that the paperwork is wrong.

That seems to be their tactic, is they’ll approach you, they’ll say “Oh, we’re happy to take a look at your paperwork”. They’ll look at it and they’ll try and point out some things that are wrong.

Now, I know they’re not wrong when they are my client because I professionally prepared their paperwork.

What they’re doing is they’re making things up to say ‘oh that’s wrong’, ‘that’s incorrect, we need to fix that, step into our office and for a small fee we’ll take care of that for you’.

So just beware if you are representing yourself. Your paperwork may not be wrong. Just know that these folks that are out there soliciting for business are telling you that you have things wrong with your paperwork even when it’s not.

I’ve had my clients approached and told that their paper is wrong when it’s not. So just beware of that; when being approached by these legal services companies.

I don’t know if it’s one or many that are doing these but they are out there.

In fact, I have an attorney that works in the same building as me and brought me a business card from one these legal services and said even he was approached and spoke to someone and again the same thing, asking if he was representing himself and if he needed assistance and so forth, and a free review of their paperwork. Interesting tactic!

The reason that I wanted to get this out there is if you’re my client, your paperwork is not wrong.

I had several people call me concerned because they said a paralegal is out there by the court is telling them their paperwork is all wrong. It’s causing a little bit of issues for me.

So I want to get this out there to you folks. Your paperwork is correct if I prepared it. It’s totally fine, ignore these folks and go on into the court.

My name is Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.  661-281-0266.

Have a great day!

Cheap Divorce California | California Cheap Divorce Service

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Cheap Divorce California | California Cheap Divorce Service

Hi, my name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

And today we’re talking about our cheap divorce in California. We have a service where we can provide your divorce case; we can complete your divorce case rather, anywhere in California. We can do this completely online, and we do this literally in person.

So instead of you coming into our office, we’re going to have appointments right over the phone and typing up these forms for you.

So let me briefly talk to you about the difference in using our online service and any other service out there.

You’ll notice if you’re searching around that there’re many companies offering different types of online divorce solutions. When you use these services, you’re going to be asked to fill out a lengthy questionnaire, usually 20 to 30 pages maybe online, and then those answers you type in are auto-filled into the court forms then you print those forms and then everything else is up to you.

So that really isn’t a true online divorce solution, you’re going to have to do all the work, file the forms, serve all the forms, make sure that you do it correctly because when you use these online divorce solutions, nobody is verifying that you did it correct.

We had a client come to us after using one of these online services and they mistyped and misunderstood the questionnaires. But when they printed the forms they printed out just as they typed them in which were completely wrong and the company wouldn’t allow them to redo it.

They already received the product.

So we recommend you use a service like ours, we can do everything for you, start to finish.

We’ll file, serve, complete all the financial disclosures; we’ll go down to court file them, regardless of where you’re at in California. We can take care of your divorce for you, we will save you fees on your filing fees so a lot of our costs are absorbed by the money you saved in filing fees, please make sure you ask me when you call.

How we can have you save on the response fee, my name is Tim Blankenship. We are a small company in northern LA County, you will work direct with us, we are not a major conglomerate company but we do handle our fair share of divorces in California. That’s all we do.

We specialize in divorce and we can help you anywhere you’re at.

661-281-0266. For more information visit our website, divorce661.com

Affordable California Divorce Service

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Affordable California Divorce Service

Hi, my name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

I’m a licensed and bonded legal document preparation assistant; we specialize with divorce in California.

And today we’re talking about our affordable divorce service in California.

We are a small firm in northern LA County. We serve all of the California courts and we have a way where we can provide our divorce service to you completely online.

Now when I say online it’s a little of a misnomer, we are inline but we are different from any of the other online divorce companies in that we actually type up your forms for you.

You’ll notice if you’re searching around, many of the other companies will say you’re going to fill out the questionnaire as completely automated.

We don’t do that, we have many clients who have come to us who attempted to use those services, and failed. The forms were incorrect and not to mention you have to do all the work. You fill out the forms then you get the forms mailed to you or you print them out in your home.

Now you’re left with the 20 page instruction sheet of what to do, file this, serve that, and you have to do all the work.

And that’s one of the most difficult part, filling out the forms is relatively easy.

With us, we will make a phone appointment with you; we can do it by email but no questionnaires. We go step by step over the phone with you and we actually type up the forms based on your responses, we’re there to answer your questions and explain the process so you fully understand what’s going on.

Why are you checking a certain box or why are you providing certain answer. This way there are no mistakes, this is a serious matter, even the uncontested divorce, you would want to the documents right, you want to get them served correctly and that’s what we’re here for.

We are a full service firm providing our service online and over the phone to help you get through this. Since we’ve started making this video, our business had picked up dramatically with people who want a personal touch with their divorce, even though it’s remotely done, even though it’s done online and over the phone. Someone they can call, someone they can ask questions of and that’s done very well for us.

As far as costs, you’ll find that even though our fees are slightly higher than the online firms, we’re going to save you money in court fees cause we are able to get those fees waived and we’ll talk about that when you call us. So our fees are reduced because we’re going to save you in court fees so make sure you ask me about that.

My name is Tim Blankenship divorce661.com. please give me a call so we can talk about your particular issues in your case. Anywhere in California so we can explain the process and let you know how we can get this done for you and make the frustration and costs minimal for you.

661-281-0266, Tim Blankenship divorce661.com.

Thank you.

Santa Clarita Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce Services

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Santa Clarita Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce Services

Hi, my name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

We are licensed and bonded legal document preparation form, we specialize in divorce, essentially, we are paralegals. You probably know us as paralegals; you may have even searched for us and found us by searching for a divorce paralegal.

So I just want to talk a little bit about the Santa Clarita divorce process.

If you’re watching this you’ve obviously searched for something relevant to that.

Again, we are licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm, we specialize in divorce and we are headquartered in Santa Clarita. We can help you with your divorce case, either filing for divorce, or responding for divorce, essentially anything that has to do with divorce, custody, family in general, anything that the family court, we can handle.

Post-judgment motions, if you need to modify support, up or down, change custody visitation, basically everything we can take care of for you.

As legal document assistants we can have a direct relationship with you as opposed to a paralegal that has to work under the supervision of an attorney.

We don’t have any attorneys in our firm, we’re not required to, the county, per our bond, and our license, trust us to work directly with you, due to our experiences in the firm. So let’s talk about that a little bit our experiences.

Started off working at the self-help clinics at the San Fernando court house, did that for six months, followed by doing a two year internship with the Los Angeles superior court in the family law department, in fact I still have my certification with them to this date.

After that I’ve worked with Santa Clarita’s largest family law firm for two years, getting additional exposure.

So I have experienced both form the law firm perspective, the court perspective, and the self-help client perspective, roll  that all together and here we are today with divorce661 in Santa Clarita. Helping clients save money, get through the divorce process, paying us to help you avoid frustration doing this on your own.

This has been Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com we have free consultation feel free to give me a buzz 661-281-0266 and you can always get more information at our website at divorce661.com.

Thanks for reading!

Santa Clarita Divorce Legal Document Service

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Santa Clarita Divorce Legal Document Service

Hi, my name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

Today, we’re talking about legal document preparation, legal document assistant, and what that means.

We’re a legal document preparation firm. By law we are licensed and bonded to prepare legal documents, and we just happen to specialize in divorce.

You may know us as paralegals, that is what our independent paralegals, that’s what most people are searching for on the internet but technically we are not allowed to call ourselves that but we do some marketing as divorce paralegals cause the majority of folks know that they’re looking for a paralegal when they’re trying to find a more affordable approach to divorce.

But legal document preparation, LDA as it’s know is what we are, essentially we are licensed and bonded to work directly with the public, we don’t  have to have an attorney in our office, essentially the county licensed us to work directly with you without attorney supervision. And then in return we are able to have a more affordable pricing.

Paralegals –just kind of giving you a history lesson, if someone’s calling themselves a paralegal, they have to be working for an attorney, and your relationship is directly with that attorney not directly with the paralegal.

So for us, as legal document assistants, if you work with us, your relationship is directly with us no attorney supervision and thus, more affordable costs in preparing your divorce case, we have divorce prices, anywhere from $699 up, it really just depends on the amount of assistance you need, and the amount of work involved. But it doesn’t go much up from there.

If you’re looking to get through your divorce case in an affordable way, we definitely recommend out service, obviously, we can help you at any point.

We find that people call us at the very beginning, somewhere in between, maybe you got started and you’re having difficulty, we can pick up where you left off. We even have cases coming in, they’re 20 years old, and were never finished.

So wherever you’re at, we do everything there is to do with divorce, we do divorce cases, paternity cases, child custody motions, spousal support motions, custody visitation, child support – essentially everything, we do declarations, and all types of motions.

So anything you need to do in a family law of court we can help you with. What legal document assistance can’t do, what we’re prohibited from doing is providing you legal advice and going to court for you. So if don’t need those two things, there’s no need to use an attorney, even If you do have some legal questions you can get those answered online or go pay for a consultation and then come back to us and we’ll prepare the remainder of your case.

My name is Tim Blankenship divorce661.com, we’re headquartered in Santa Clarita, California.

Please feel free to give us a call, we do offer free consultations, the number is 661-281-0266, and thanks for reading!