Does Facebook Marketing For Divorce Services Work?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

I have a divorce paralegal business in Santa Clarita, CA and have done well with online marketing.  I have been experimenting with Facebook advertising and wanted to share what I have learned and perhaps get comments from others in the divorce industry such as attorneys and mediators, etc.

I have spent more time than I would like to admit on testing Facebook marketing.  I have placed advertising on the right hand side of Facebook.  You know the annoying ads on the right hand side.  Honestly, I don’t even notice that there are ads there anymore.  I did get lots of clicks but no  conversions or phone calls that I can say translated into new business.

I then started seeing business’s market by using the “Related Posts” on Facebook.  After several hours I did figure out how to property use the promoted posts and I did get some business out of it.  I also got a lot of people liking my page.

It seemed like this was a good way of advertising at first, until I saw how much I was being charged.  I had set a daily budget of $100 and Facebook made sure to eat all that money up every day.  I could not figure out why my costs were so high when  the estimated price per click was supposed to be less than a dollar each.

What I learned is that folks clicking on the ad did not necessarily have to click on “like” which was what I was after.  So the net result was I was spending $7.00 per like on Facebook.

Unless someone has another thought on the matter, my impression is that it is not worth $7.00 just to have someone like my page.  I don’t even pay $7.00 per click on Google Adwords.

So do you think Facebook Marketing works for those providing divorce services?  I would have to say that my campaign was a wash.  The business generated on the promotion was just enough to pay for the ads.  Not something I necessarily want to duplicate.

We are a licensed and bonded divorce paralegal service (Legal Document Assistant).  We specialize in providing affordable divorce services in California.

Default California Divorce Judgment | Can You Terminate Spousal Support

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

This is a follow up article to our discussion on how to terminate spousal support on long term marriages in California.  That article spoke about how and if you can terminate spousal by agreement in your divorce.

This article will discuss how and if you can terminate spousal support when you have a long term marriage and you are filing your divorce by default.

By default, simply means that your spouse did not file a response.

The Court says that if you have a marriage over 10 years that jurisdiction for spousal support will be indefinite.  We have filed many default divorce judgments in California and the filing party wanted to terminate spousal support despite it being a long term marriage.

At first we tried to submit default judgments per the clients request, knowing that it would get rejected by the court, but sometimes that is the only way you can prove your right.

When this happened, folks going through divorce were stuck having indefinite jurisdiction on spousal support with no other options.

But you do have one last option you can use if you really want to terminate the Courts jurisdiction on spousal support on your long term marriage in California.

There is a form called “Request For Default Setting” and is form FAM-031.  This form is used when you have filed or are filing concurrently a Request To Enter Default.

If you look at the form, you will notice that you can set a default hearing if you are seeking to obtain a judgment based on the fact that you a requesting to terminate spousal support in a marriage over 10 years.

We have begun filing many of these Request For Default Settings lately because our clients don’t want to be stuck with indefinite jurisdiction over spousal support simply because their spouse did not respond.

We have not had any default hearings set yet, but we will report back when our clients begin to go to these hearings and let you now what the Court is asking in order to approve the termination of spousal support on a long term marriage default divorce judgments.

Terminating Spousal Support On Long Term Marriage | California Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We handle a lot of divorce cases in California every month an so come across a lot of different issues.

If you do your homework, you will learn that California considers any marriage over 10 years to be of long term.  As this pertains to spousal support, the Courts say that long term marriages have indefinite jurisdiction over spousal support.

What this means is that the Court will have the jurisdiction to award Spousal Support indefinitely when the marriage is over 10 years.

So here is the question.

  1. How do you terminate spousal support on long term marriages when the parties agree that they want to do so?

First, I must state that we are not a law office and not attorneys.  We just process a high volume of divorce cases in California. We cannot recite the law or give advice, we are simply explaining what we have come across and how we have handled it.

So for the first question.  How to terminate spousal support on long term marriages when the parties agree.  What we have done is to have both the parties sign a waiver. This is a waiver we drafted and include it in the judgment on the spousal support order part of the judgment.

We simply make sure to cover the reasons spousal support can normally be requested or modified.  We say the parties agree to terminate spousal support and that the order terminating spousal support is non-modifiable by either party for any reason and that regardless of future needs of spousal support or ability to pay spousal support, the court cannot make orders for spousal support.

If the parties stipulate to terminate spousal support on long term marriages, the courts will generally sign off on this.

Depending on the Court, they may reject the judgment.  We have had some Judges state that they will not approve agreements that violate the law.  They have told us that in long term marriages, the Court will retain jurisdiction indefinitely, you remarry or die.

So it appears it will depend on the Judge if you can get them to approve the judgment terminating spousal support on your long term marriage.

If you find your judgment getting rejected for this reason, one last thing you can do is file a motion (Request For Order) to enter judgment.  In the motion you can request the court grant your judgment to terminate spousal support.  You and your spouse can attend the hearing and explain to the court that you are willingly giving up this right.

We would love to hear any feedback from folks who have done this or attorneys who have had other successes.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in divorce.  We are headquartered in Los Angeles, CA and serve all the Courts in California.

Van Nuys Divorce Motions Now 90 Days Until Hearing

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We just learned that Van Nuys divorce motions are taking 90 days to get a hearing.  This means from the time you file a Request For Order (RFO) it will be at least 90 days until you will see the judge.

(By the way, we can help you prepare a motion (request for order) if you are looking to file a motion or respond to one.)

This is bad news for those who are filing a motion with the court to modify child support or spousal support or need any type of orders for that matter.

We had previously written in the past on this topic where we reported that divorce motions were taking up to 60 days, which at the time was up from 45 days.

It appears the the service we can expect from the Los Angeles Divorce Courts are getting worse.  This is, by far, the longest time frames we have seen recently.  I spoke to our attorney service who files all our court documents everyday and they said that the Van Nuys divorce court is by far the worst when it comes to getting a hearing.

I don’t know if it is because it is October and the court has a lot of day of coming up that the court will be closed due to holidays and Judges out due to vacation or not, but we could only hope.  Because if this is a consistent issue, we will not likely see any improvements.

You have to keep this in mind when you are going to file a motion.  If you need an order right away, you are going to want to file a motion as soon as possible.  Today is September 30, 2013 and I was told by Van Nuys Court that they are already scheduling motions and hearing into January.

Let me give you a little reality on what this means.  Lets say you need to file a motion for child support or spousal support.  You are filing because your spouse won’t agree out of court to pay any support.

Obviously there is a need for support and you need money.  So you file your motion and you have to wait 90 days.  This is 90 days until the hearing only.  It is not like you are going to get a check from you spouse at the hearing!

Sometimes, after the hearing, the person who filed the motion will be asked to prepare an order after hearing that both parties would have to sign.  This process can add at least another month. Once you get that signed, you need to submit it to the court for the judge to sign.  Yes, you got it!  Another month indeed.

So now you are looking at almost 5 months before your request for spousal support or any order you request to take effect.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation service that specializes in divorce in California.  We provide a flat fee pricing schedule to make divorce affordable.

 

How To Find My California Divorce Case Number

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

I am often asked how someone going through a California divorce can find their divorce case number.  While the case number is found on the divorce documents themselves, what if you lost them and need to get a copy.  The first thing you will need is your case number.

To keep the California divorce process slightly confidential, California does not have a way you can locate your case number online.  But the courts do make available that ability at the courthouse.  So while you can’t get that information from your home computer, you can if you go down to the court.

Some of the courthouses have a public access computer for use in the clerks office.  If this is available in your court, you are able to search by name.  When you do this you will be able to find your and your spouses name and locate your case number.

If the court does not have a public access computer, you can ask for them to look up your case number.  They will usually require that you show them identification so they know it is you looking up a case and not trying to get information on someone else.

I have had people call me who had filed for divorce in California many years ago and wanted to see if their case was still open.  They now wanted to proceed and thought their case would have been dismissed.  It is a good idea to check first.  While the rule of thumb is that the court will dismiss cases after 5 years, it does not happen all the time.

If you find that your old case is still open, it is better to continue on with that one as it will save you court fees.  If you file a new case, you will have to pay the filing fee again.

Santa Clarita Divorce Consultation

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

If you are going to get divorced and live in Santa Clarita, you will most likely need a Santa Clarita divorce consultation at some point.

We offer free divorce consultations either over the phone or in our office.  It is really just your preference.  Most of our divorce consultations occur over the phone and then an appointment is set to come in and get started.

We are a licensed divorce paralegal service in Santa Clarita.  Known as Legal Document Assistants, we can take care of your entire divorce from start to finish for one flat fee.  Because we are not a law firm, we can and do, in most cases, work with both spouses who are working toward an amicable divorce.

We are a full service divorce legal service.  We are able to prepare, file and serve all your divorce forms.  We can help you to figure out what child support and spousal support guidelines are and prepare your final judgment.

Basically, we do everything a divorce law firm does, except give legal advice and represent you in court.

The best way to contact us for a Santa Clarita Divorce Consultation is simply to pick up the phone and call our local Santa Clarita office.   No appointment is necessary for a phone consultation, you can simply just call.  However, if you wanted to come in it is important that you schedule an appointment with us as we operate by appointment only so we can provided the best customer service possible.

We don’t charge for our Santa Clarita Divorce Consultations.  That is a rarity in the legal industry.  You will find that most attorneys will charge anywhere from $150 to $400 for a one hour divorce consultation in Santa Clarita.

So please feel free to give us a call.  The direct number to our office is 661-281-0266.  We serve all the courts in Los Angeles County and specialize in only divorce.

Online California Divorce Service

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We have been making a big marketing push to talk about our Online California Divorce Service.  Our Online California Divorce Service is unlike any other online divorce service out there, so you are going to want to keep reading.

First, let’s talk about these other services out there.

When you do your research for Online California Divorce Services, you will find numerous companies stating they provide an online divorce service in California. The issue is that these services are completely automated and there is nobody to review what you have done.

It is called automated document assembly.  Essentially, you enter  your info into a long questionnaire and your answers are populated onto the forms.  First issue is that nobody reviews your documents. Second, the divorce forms the online divorce companies use are usually outdated. Third, you have to do all the filing and serving of your documents.

That is not the case when you use our service.  We take care of everything for you.  We will complete all your forms.  On our initial appointment, we will meet with you over the phone and complete the initial documents.  No questionnaires to fill out.

Once we have the initial divorce documents completed, we will send to you to sign and return.  Once received back, we will file them with the court and then serve them on your spouse.  Service can be completed by process server and in most cases by mail in amicable divorce cases.

Our California Online Divorce Service will work just like this throughout the process with us preparing all the documents for you and explaining the process and answering your questions along the way.

With our California Online Divorce Service, we don’t leave you with all the document and hard work.  That is included in our full service Online California Divorce Service.

Please give us a call to discuss your specific divorce case.  We would be happy to assist you.  You can reach us at 661-281-0266.

Divorce661.com Reviews & Ratings

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

At Divorce661.com we have many happy clients who give us great reviews and ratings.  Usually these reviews and ratings of our divorce service in Santa Clarita are by way of a simple email or kind word in our office.

Many of these reviews and ratings are never made official.  So we  thought we would discuss our reviews and ratings from our clients.

While there are review sites out there such as Yelp, most people simply don’t want to write a review or rating on a public forum or online for all to see.  We completely understand folks who don’t want to write a review or rating on our divorce service for purposes of privacy.

But as mentioned above, we do get many “Thank You’s”, “Couldn’t Have Done It Without You”, and “You’re A Godsend” in person comments and emails on a daily basis.

Customer reviews and ratings are a popular search term on companies.  We realized that, prior to this post, there really was no listing for reviews or ratings on our company aside from the major review and rating online companies.

At Divorce661.com we take our job very seriously and customer satisfaction is our top priority.  We live in the same neighborhoods in Santa Clarita as our clients and see them in the local grocery stores.  It is important to us to have a good reputation in Santa Clarita.

This model has served us well as we have received great reviews and ratings from our clients and this is further proven by the amount of referrals we receive from our clients.  When a client give us a referral to one of their friends or family, that they are trusting us to take as good as care of them as we did them.

So to those who have written public reviews and ratings or have written us a kind not or just showed your appreciation, we thank you.

Divorce661.com is owned by Tim Blankenship, a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm, headquartered in Santa Clarita.  Divorce661.com provides an affordable divorce service to all of California.

Where Can I Get A Cheap Divorce In Los Angeles

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Okay, so I can only assume you searched for information of where you can get a cheap divorce in Los Angeles.  You have come to the right spot if you are looking for a cheap divorce in Los Angeles.

If you are looking for a cheap divorce in Los Angeles, then you are going to want to use a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in divorce. Legal Document Assistants are essentially paralegals that are allowed to work directly with clients going through divorce without the supervision of an attorney.  The result is that you don’t have to pay expensive attorney fees when you work with a service like ours that specializes in divorce in Los Angeles.

Our cheap divorce service in Los Angeles is based upon a flat fee structure.  This way you know exactly how much your Los Angeles divorce is going to cost you.

Our prices are as cheap as $599.  This is for a full service divorce process.  So let’s talk about what you get here.

We take care of everything including:

  • Preparing your divorce forms
  • Filing your divorce forms with the court
  • Serving all divorce forms
  • Preparing a hybrid or default judgment
  • preparing final divorce judgment papers
  • Determination of child support
  • Determination of Spousal Support

If you are going to price shop for a cheap divorce in Los Angeles, make sure that you are getting and apples to apples comparison.  Some companies are not licensed and are operating illegally. Some companies are not going to file your documents for you or have hidden fees.  Some companies have you fill out a questionnaire.

The point I am trying to make is that you have to be careful when deciding who you are going to use to complete your Los Angeles Divorce.  You know what you get when something is cheap.

I know I titled this article “Where Can I Get A Cheap Divorce in Los Angeles” but only because there is a lot of people searching for this service with those terms.  Don’t be fooled.  We provide an excellent, full service divorce solution for a flat fee.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in providing divorce services directly to the consumer in Los Angeles. Please give us a call for more information about or Los Angeles Divorce Service.

Much of what we do is right over the phone and you do not have to travel to our office if you chose not to.

Professional Divorce Service In Santa Clarita | SCV Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

When people are looking for an affordable way to get divorced in Santa Clarita, many chose to use our professional divorce service.  We are the only licensed and bonded divorce document preparation firm in Santa Clarita.

What makes us a professional divorce service?  That is a good question.

First off, we have the experience it takes to get your divorce completed.  Our experience started in the self help centers in the Los Angeles Family Law courts many years ago.  Cutting our teeth learning the divorce process from the ground up while assisting people who could not afford an attorney.

The next thing we did is complete an internship with the family law department in the Los Angeles Superior Courts.  We worked at the Lancaster Branch, Central Branch and San Fernando Branch.  We sat with the family law clerks and learned from the judges as we sat and assisted the judicial assistants in the court room.  We still have our foot in the door with the Los Angeles Superior Court and still assist them to this day.

After working at the court, we worked for one of Santa Clarita’s largest family law firms for over 2 years.  We gained insights from the attorney perspective.  It was only after numerous year of experience with the divorce courts and family law attorneys, did we start our divorce document preparation service in Santa Clarita.

So that pretty much sums up our experience.  Since starting our professional divorce service, we have gained great strides and our business continues to expand.  We now prepare approximately 6-8 new divorce cases every week here from our little office.

Folks are beginning to realized that when it comes to getting a divorce in Santa Clarita and the surrounding Los Angeles area, that we are the place to go for professional divorce services.

One of the things we have done that has made us successful is that we decided early on that we would only do divorce cases. We are not the only licensed and bonded legal document preparation service in Los Angeles, but we are the only ones that specialize in only divorce cases.  This makes us the obvious choice when you decide to get divorced in Santa Clarita.

We are Santa Clarita’s only professional divorce service.  Please give us a call for more information.