Top 5 Reasons Your California Divorce Was Not Finished

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We have been doing this a long time and we have heard it all. We have helped clients finish their divorce as much as 18
years after they “thought their divorce was finalized”

This can be a nightmare for some, especially if you have already been re-married… Yes, that has happened…

But don’t worry, we can help finalize your divorce.

Lets talk about the top 10 reasons your divorce was never
finalized..

#1 Reason – You did not finish your case!

Don’t get mad at me, I wasn’t there. But really, this is an obvious reason, right?

What we have found from people who did not finish their case is that most of them THOUGHT THEIR CASE WAS FINALIZED.

#2 Reason – You went to a hearing and the judge made orders.

When you go to a hearing and the judge makes orders, they are JUST TEMPORARY ORDERS until final judgment is entered. We have found that many people think that once they go to court that the case is over when the judge makes orders. So far from the truth.

#3 Reason – Final Judgment in your case was never entered.

The judge may make some orders at a hearing or trial, but unless those orders are memorialized on a final judgment, submitted to the Court and signed by the Judge, your case is not completed.

#4 Reason – You made an error on your judgment paperwork.

This is a big one. The forms are confusing and all it takes is one mistake to fowl up the entire judgment. Some people submit their judgment and move and don’t receive notification that their divorce judgment was rejected.

Make sure you receive notice of entry of judgment!

#5 Reason – You did not comply with the divorce procedures leading up to your judgment.

This could be something as small as not completing a proof of service correctly.

There are all types of reasons your divorce was never finalized.

A lot of it will be procedural issues. Things you did wrong during the process.

But don’t worry, we can help. We can clean it up and wrap up your divorce for you.

Anywhere in California, we can assist with finishing up your case. Just give us the case number so we can see what has been done.

We will also need to see what documents you have previously filed, but we can talk about that later.

Call us at 661-281-0266.

California Divorce | We Can Review Your Divorce Judgment

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We just completed a radio broadcast today on blog talk radio and we wanted to get the word out about  how and why you need to get your divorce judgment reviewed in California before you submit to the court for review.

On the radio show we were discussing some of the issues people are having when trying to complete their California divorce on their own. When people are completing their own divorce they have a falsee sense of security because when they are turning in their form such as their summons and their petition and all the other documents nobody ever says to them that they’re doing anything wrong.

Listen to internet radio with Tim Blankenship on BlogTalkRadio

The problem with this is that when you go to file your judgment, that will be the first time anyone actually looks at the paperwork you filed. It’s not the clerk’s job to look at your paperwork when you’re turning it in. So what the clerk does is take your forms that you may have completed wrong stamps them and puts them in the courts file.

This leaves you thinking you’ve done everything right and you don’t find out you made a mistake until you’ve turned in your final divorce judgment.

So you go through the whole divorce process, fill out all the forms you think you did everything right. You turn in your judgment and several months go by and you think to yourself that you must’ve done it right. Then out of the blue, six months later, you get paperwork back from the court. “You think, “great this is going to be my completed divorce” and what you find is a three-page notice of rejection of your divorce case.

Now what you have to do is go back figure out what you did wrong. You need to go through the checklist of issues trying fix what you did. Many times you’ll find it was a procedural issue and you have to go back and not only re-file paperwork but you’re going to end up having to re-serve certain paperwork as well.

What we recommend is that prior to submitting your final judgment in cases where you have prepared your entire divorce case, that you use our service where we will review your entire divorce judgment before it goes and gets submitted to the court.

By doing this you will ensure that your paperwork is done correctly. What we do with the divorce judgment review process is we will look at everything you have done up to the point of completing your judgment. We will review all the past paperwork and if any corrections need to be done we will take care of it.  If anything needs to be re-served we will take care of it and we will review and prepare your judgment and submit it to the court for review.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in divorce in California.

For more information about why to have your divorce judgment reviewed please listen to the podcast in this article.

Divorce Judgment Gives People The Most Trouble | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

If you have tried to prepare your own divorce or are considering doing so, you will learn how confusing and difficult the divorce paperwork can be.  But the worst is yet to come.

Most people will have some problems with the initial divorce documents.  They will have items rejected, not file them correctly and not fill them out right.  But the final test will be when you go to prepare the divorce judgment.

The divorce judgment is the last set of divorce documents that can be up to 25 pages long or more.  These final judgment documents give everyone  a problem.

But there is a bigger issue when completing the final divorce judgment forms and doing them wrong.  When you submit the final judgment documents, they will go into a huge pile of judgments that are also waiting to be approved.  The current wait time for your divorce judgment to be reviewed is 3 months to as long as 6 months.

This means that every time you submit your final divorce judgment, you will have to wait several months before your learn if it was done correctly or not.  I know people that attempted to complete their own divorce and have submitted their judgment 3 times.  They have been trying to complete their divorce for over 3 years.  They have been trying to get their final divorce paperwork approved for over a year.

Some people figure it out really fast that they need help and others are a glutton for punishment and keep asking for more rejection.  That was an attempt at humor, but you have to hand it to these folks that keep on trying.

Whether you have not quite gotten to the final divorce judgment phase or are one of these folks that have had the judgment rejected numerous times and are ready for help, please give us a call.

We do a lot of judgment reviews where we will take a look at your entire divorce case from beginning to end and complete and correct all the documents so they can be submitted and approved by the court.

Sole And Community Property Must Be Disposed Of In Divorce Judgment | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

This article addresses the the issue of your divorce judgment being rejected with the box marked, “All sole and community property listed in the Petition must be disposed of in the Judgment”

We will discuss how to fix your divorce judgment if it has been rejected for the this reason.  We have also completed a video on how to fix your divorce judgment is it was rejected because you did all your sole and community property that was listed on the Petition was not disposed of in the divorce judgment.

When you file your divorce Petition in California there are two areas that ask you to list your property.  The first asks you to list your separate property and the second area asks you to list your community property.  You can either list the property on the divorce Petition or use one of the allowed attachments or supplement with a property declaration where you can list all your property.

Regardless how you go about listing your property, you need to make sure that you dispose of all the property in the final divorce judgment.

The issues is this.  If you list property, whether it be an asset or debt, you are telling the court that this asset or debt exists.  If you don’t tell the court who is getting the property, then this property is just left sitting there with no owner.  If the judge were to sign this judgment, it would effectively leave this asset or debt not being assigned to either the Petitioner or Respondent.

Now this may seem like a small technicality if, say for instance, the asset was small such as a bank account with $10 in it.  But what if your forgot to assign a bank account with $10,000 in it?  Now, maybe you have an agreement with your spouse regarding who is going to keep it, but if it is not listed on the judgment when the judge signs, then technically the asset or debt does not below to anybody.

To correct this issue, all you need to do is make sure all sole and community property you listed on your divorce Petition is listed on the judgment.  If you completed a marital settlement agreement, you would simply add this to the list for whom it is going to.  If you are using the judgment attachments, you would add the property to the correct property attachment indicating who is getting the asset or debt.

We are headquartered in Santa Clarita, CA and serve all the Los Angeles Area courts.  We specialize in helping people get through the divorce process.  Give us a call for more information.

California Hybrid Divorce Judgment Checklist

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

The last thing you will do in your divorce when representing yourself is to prepare the divorce judgment forms.  Which divorce judgment forms you submit will vary depending on what transpired up to this point.  Meaning whether your spouse filed a response and whether there is an agreement.

In this post we are talking about the California Hybrid Divorce Judgment and providing you with a PDF Checklist the Courts use to make sure you have included all the proper forms.

The Hybrid divorce judgment checklist will be used when you have filed a Petition, the case is proceeding by default, and the parties have a written agreement.  Yes, it is possible for you to have a written agreement even if your spouse has not filed a response.  It is called a hybrid because it is a cross between a true default case (where there is no response and no agreement) and an uncontested case (where a response was filed and there is an agreement)

Depending on the type of divorce judgement you submitting the judgment forms required to ensure your divorce is not rejected are all different.  We have several videos covering the various ways and different forms necessary to file your divorce depending on the circumstances.

If you want to download the PDF attachment you can click on this link “Hybrid Dissolution Judgment Checklist California Divorce“.  We recommend that you print it out and use it as a checklist both to ensure you have all the necessary documents, but it also lets the court know what kind of divorce judgment you are filing and will help in getting it approved and not rejected.

We are licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm specializing in divorce.  We are headquartered in Santa Clarita, California and can assist you with you divorce anywhere in California.