We Know Divorce In Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We Know Divorce In Santa Clarita

We are the industry specialist when it comes to divorce.  While we are headquartered in Santa Clarita and we do serve clients going through divorce all throughout California.

The divorce process is essentially the same everywhere in California.  In fact, the forms are completely the same, outside of a a few counties who have specific local area forms that are mostly used to determine jurisdiction of your divorce case.

In addition, the divorce process is the same.  The divorce courts want there to be some commonality in regards to the divorce process throughout California.

Because this is the case, the assistance you can receive from the divorce court facilitators and divorce court mediators are basically the same anywhere in California.

When we say we know divorce in Santa Clarita, is to say that we know the divorce process inside and out as it pertains to California divorce.

While the majority of our business is right here in Santa Clarita,  we do have a good percentage of business that comes from outside the Los Angeles area and from a lot of the other Counties in California.

Folks routinely tell us that we are the most informative divorce service in California.  We get calls from all over California who advise us that they have called numerous companies and we are the first company they have spoken with that makes them fell like we understand the divorce process.

That is what it really boils down to.  Hopefully, you will only have to go through the divorce process once.  Make sure you get it done right the first time and don’t use the low cost leader which almost always ends up with problems.

We are a full service divorce document preparation service that specializes in divorce in Santa Clarita and all of California.

We look forward to hearing from you and helping your get through the divorce process quickly and efficiently.

Best Value Divorce In Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Best Value Divorce In Santa Clarita

I recently read an article about pricing the services of a business.  The article said that you should emphasize the value of your service instead of focusing on price.

The article also indicated that when one competed on price, saying that they were the cheapest service, that people grew concerned that they would truly get what they paid for.

If you have every called us to ask about our service, you know that we are not shy about our pricing.  We know that even though we are slightly higher than others in the Los Angeles area, that you are getting such a better value, that we are worth it.  Don’t risk using the low cost leader when it comes to filing your divorce forms.  There is a reason they charge so little.

So what makes our Santa Clarita divorce service to valuable anyways.  Well, for starters, we are a full service divorce firm.  We take care of all the forms, prepare and file every document and serve all necessary forms.  Other folks mail you a questionnaire which you are required to fill out.  Then they simply take your answers and plug them in.  Even if it is wrong, that is what they fill in the blank with.

We work with the Los Angeles Superior Courts in the Family Law departments as intern/volunteers so we can keep up to speed with changing laws, process’s and forms.  Because of this, we can go deeper with you as far as explaining how the divorce process works and help you better navigate the court system when your divorce doesn’t go as smooth as you thought it would in the beginning.

People chose our service because of the value.  In fact, we have people calling us from all corners of California for help.  In most cases, they say we are the first, if not the only, legal document preparation service that seemed to know what we were talking about.

This is because there are so many amateurs out there saying they can help folks prepare their divorce forms, when truly they have no business being in business.

Summary Divorce More Expensive Than Regular Divorce | Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Summary Divorce More Expensive Than Regular Divorce | Santa Clarita

It seems that everyone raves about the ease of filing a summary divorce for those who qualify.  But did you know that the cost for filing a summary divorce is more expensive than filing a regular divorce?

Here’s why.  When you file divorce papers, you have to pay a filing fee.  The cost is different County to County but in most areas that fee is north of $400.  Los Angeles County, for instance, is currently $435.00.   The court refers to what is called “First Papers”.  First Papers filed in a family law case have to pay the filing fee.

A summary dissolution is a Joint Petition.  This means that both parties are considered the petitioner and they are identified as Petitioner 1 and Petitioner 2.  When this joint summary divorce petition is filed, both parties will have to pay the filing fee, unless you qualify for a fee waiver.

This is no problem if you qualify for a fee waiver.  But what if one of the parties is incarcerated and unable to submit a fee waiver, which is the case here, or if neither party qualifies for a fee waiver?

In this case, it might be a smarter move, and definitely less expensive, to prepare a regular divorce and go by way of default.  In a regular divorce, the other party does not have to respond if they don’t want to.  Because they are not filing a response, they would not have to pay the filing fee.

If you were going to prepare a summary divorce, this meant that both parties were in total agreement ( which is one of the requirements) so there would be no harm in preparing a default divorce and lay out the agreement in the default judgment.

Preparing a regular divorce has quite a bit more paperwork than does the summary divorce.  But the important thing for us is that our clients save money in the divorce process.

We will leave it up to the client to decide which way they want to go in this case.

How To Prepare Settlement Agreement In Summary Divorce | Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How To Prepare Settlement Agreement In Summary Divorce | Santa Clarita

I have been working with a client lately who we are preparing a summary divorce for.  If you are unfamiliar with a Summary divorce, it basically is a process that is simpler and has less paperwork.  Unfortunately, there are many restrictions for using the summary divorce, thus not many people can use it.

When you prepare a settlement agreement for a summary divorce, you are essentially telling the court who is getting what community property and who is getting what community debts.  That is generally not an issue as this is pretty easy to understand.  In fact, the court even has a template of how the settlement agreement should read when prepared for a summary divorce.

One area where I did see where people will run into trouble is in regards to the spousal support section on the summary divorce settlement agreement.

When you file a summary divorce, one of the restrictions is that neither party can request spousal support and you have to waive spousal support forever.

The property settlement agreement the court says is okay to use, does not have the required language to waive spousal support.  The court’s version only says, “Each of us waives any claim for spousal support now and for all time”.  The problem with this language is that it does not address the courts jurisdiction over spousal support.

I had a client have their divorce judgment rejected because the spousal support section did not contain the following words. “The court terminates jurisdiction over the issue of spousal support”.  So I don’t know if the court is aware of this issue or not, but I made sure to also include this language.

The courts instructions on completing the summary divorce settlement agreement is a little unclear and can set people up for failure.  If you think you qualify for a summary divorce, please give us a call and we would be happy to prepare it for you.

Santa Clarita Divorce Services Here To Stay

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Santa Clarita Divorce Services Here To Stay

We take great pride in our divorce service which includes our logo where we use a sign post as our featured image.  Just like our allegiance to the Santa Clarita area, the image of a divorce 661 sign post is equally suited.

If you live in the Santa Clarita valley and are in the position where you need to file for divorce or have questions about divorce, we are the folks who can help you.  We are down to earth people who care more about providing a great service and helping people than our bottom line.

While we are not a non-profit, we do make sure to help as many people as we can, whether that results in money in our pocket or not.  We routinely help folks who do not have the means to hire our services, get the answers they need so they can represent themselves in their divorce proceeding.

We realize that the self represented divorce client is severely unrepresented.  It is our goal to fill that gap of un-represented divorce clients and while we do not provide legal advice, we can help them through the divorce process from start to finish.

We find that the vast majority of folks don’t want to spend the money it takes to hire a divorce attorney to represent them in their Santa Clarita divorce.  In Fact, most don’t need an attorney at all for their uncontested and mostly amicable divorce.

Even those folks who can afford it are starting to come to terms with the actual cost of hiring a divorce attorney are are opting for our affordable divorce service instead.

We get it that it is very expensive to go thorough divorce.  We want to help you avoid the high costs of divorce and show you how to get through divorce in an amicable way so that the funds that you would normally spend on attorneys can be later used to go to the necessities of life.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation service that specializes in divorce in Santa Clarita.

Dangers Of Working With Unlicensed Divorce Paralegals | Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Dangers Of Working With Unlicensed Divorce Paralegals | Santa Clarita

I have written about it before, but I can’t emphasize enough the dangers of working with a divorce paralegal who is not licensed and who is not authorized to prepare divorce documents in Santa Clarita.

As many of you don’t know, a Paralegal cannot prepare divorce documents for folks unless they work for a divorce attorney.  What this means is, even if someone is employed as a Paralegal at a family law firm, they cannot moonlight at night and solicit business directly with a client.  This is an unauthorized practice.

We had to go to great lengths to operate our legal document preparation service within the confins of the legal requirements.  We had to meet specific and stringent guidlines from an educational and experience standpoint.

You see, the County of Los Angeles wants to make sure that you are receiving professional service by a company who has passed the rigorous tests and have met or exceeded the educational and experience guidlines.

We have spent several years honing our skills, working for major area law firms and volunteering with the Los Angeles Superior Court.

What we want to impress upon you is to be careful using a low cost, inexperienced and unlicensed paralegal who is not authorized to work directly with the publice.  I don’t mean to come down so hard on these folks, but they are giving the legal document assistant profession a bad name.

The general public does not know the difference between a paralegal and a legal document preparation service, and thus they take advantage of this fact and and promote their services on free ad boards such as Craigslist, etc.

It is dangerouse to work with and unskilled, unlicensed paralegal that says they can help you with your divorce.

You may think you are saving money, but in the end you will deal with much frustration and anxiety from doing so.

Give us a call

When You Have Questions About Divorce | Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When You Have Questions About Divorce | Santa Clarita

Everyone has questions about divorce… Everyone.  When you do, it is okay to talk to friends and family or even folks who have gone through it themselves.  But to get the real details, you should speak to someone who deals with it daily.

It is probably not hard to believe that we take many calls a day from folks who have questions about divorce.  Questions about the divorce process, the divorce forms and everything else in between.

We are happy to answer all the questions we can about divorce that we are allowed by law to answer.  What does this mean?

Well, because we are not attorneys we are forbidden from giving out information that would be considered legal advice.  Their is a very large gray area when it comes to what is and what isn’t legal advice.  But then again, there are the obvious questions that are meant for attorneys.

Outside of giving legal advice, we routinely answer questions about divorce from anyone that calls.  Even if they are just trying to learn about the process and gathering information.

For instance, today I had a husband that called to say that he was just served divorce papers by his wife.  He wanted to know what he had to do.  I advised him of which forms he needs to file if he wants to respond.  We even went over a couple of the questions on each of the forms.  At the end of the conversation he said he feld confident enough to at least complete these forms on his own.

That was fine by us.  He stated he will be calling back to use us to prepare his financial disclosures since we were so helpful.

I think it is called paying it forward or something like that, but it does work.

If we can be of assistance and provide you answers to the questions you have about divorce then that’s exactly what we will do.  Give us a call, you will be glad you did.

Problems With Self Preparing Divorce Forms | Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Problems With Self Preparing Divorce Forms | Santa Clarita

There are many problems one can face when attempting to self prepare your own divorce forms.  These problems can stem from procedural issues to how to properly prepare certain forms.  Let’s discuss some of the issues.

Form Completion Problems

There are many areas you can run into trouble when completing the divorce forms.  Any little mistake will result in the form having to re redone and will ultimately end with your divorce not being able to be finalized.  There are many blanks and check boxes on the divorce forms.  Some of the choices are filled with legalese making your decision on which box to check confusing.

Admittedly, when i first started learning about family law and how to prepare divorce forms several years ago, I would often think how similar all the forms are.  Some even have similar sounding names, just to add to the confusion.  Do you really need a forms called, “Declaration Regarding Service of Declaration of Disclosure”?

Procedural Issues

Here, we are talking about which forms need to be served on your spouse, which forms only get served and not filed and what forms get filed and served.  Yes, those are the several options you have.  Each form is treated a little different and unless you deal with them day in and day out like we do, it is easy to make a mistake.

Not following proper procedure is a big issue during your divorce and can cause extensive setbacks.  If you improperly serve a form, say for instance, mailing something that should have been personally served.

These issue happen all the time.  Unfortunately, many folks go through the entire divorce process with no idea they are doing many things wrong.  Only until they attempt to submit their judgment do they realize how many problems they have caused by self preparing their own divorce.

Call us to avoid running into these types of problems when filing for divorce.  We specialize in divorce and can make the process smooth and painless.

About The 6 Month Waiting Period For Divorce | Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

About The 6 Month Waiting Period For Divorce | Santa Clarita

If you are trying to find the answer about how long the divorce process takes or about the 6 month waiting period, this article should help you answer the question.

There is much confusion about the 6 month waiting period for divorce in California, also known as the cooling off period.  This is the period of time the courts want to elapse before granting  a divorce to give the parties a chance to get back together.

Here are the answers to some of the questions I routinely get about the six month waiting period.

First, you do not have to finish the divorce in the 6 month period.  It is not a “finish by” date.  Some folks have used the words as if the six months is an expiration or a date by which they have to have all the forms completed.  The court does not require you to have all of your divorce forms completed within the 6 month period.

Second, you don’t have to wait six months to start completing all the divorce paperwork.  The other question I get is “Do i have to wait 6 months before I can start filing out and turning in the paperwork”?.  Again, the answer is “No”.

Third, it is okay to file all the divorce paperwork prior to the six month mark. In fact, you can even submit your final judgment for divorce prior to the 6 months.  And in fact, we usually recommend that you do so because it is taking a very long time for the courts to review judgments right now.

Fourth, the six month waiting period begins the day the Respondent was served the first divorce papers.  It does not start the day you file, that is why it is important to get the other party served so the clock starts ticking on the 6 month waiting period.

When you work with our divorce form preparation firm, we routinely prepare the divorce papers in advance of the 6 months waiting period ending including submitting the entire divorce judgement package.  This way the divorce can be completed right after the 6 month waiting period.

Don’t Forget The Family Law Case Cover Sheet When Filing For Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Don’t Forget The Family Law Case Cover Sheet When Filing For Divorce

If you are filing for divorce in Los Angeles County, you need to be aware of some of the local forms that are required only for LA County.  Specifically, the Family Law Case Cover Sheet form FAM-020.

The family law case cover sheet is a local form that is used in Los Angeles County.  It is a certificate of grounds for assignment to a district court which asks you to chose an applicable reason for choosing the district court in which you are filing your divorce papers.

Essentially, the Family Law Case Cover Sheet is used to help the court determine jurisdiction for your case.  More simply stated, they want to make sure you are in the right court.

There is very little information that you actually have to fill out.  The first section asks for the address of the Petitioner and Respondent in the divorce case.  The address is what the courts use to determine what court you should file your case in.  The courts use boundaries that establish which branch court you can file in.

The next section asks if there are any minor children involved in the  case.  If you mark “yes”, then they know to look for the additional divorce paperwork related to children when you are completing your initial filing.

The next step asks you to indicate the type of action you are filing.  In the case of divorce, you will chose the first action which says Dissolution of Marriage.  Then you have to give an applicable reason why you are choosing this particular branch court.  If you are filing in a Branch court, which is anywhere other than Central District) you can simply circle reason 2 indicating that you live within the boundaries of the district.

The last section you will complete is section 4.  All you have to do here is list the name of the district court you are filing in.  For instance, if you are filing in the San Fernando District Court, you would write, North Valley as that is the name of the court.  You can find the district names of the courts on the court websites.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in divorce in California.  Please give us a call for more information about our services.  We are headquartered in Santa Clarita, CA and provide service throughout California.