California Divorce | Is It Okay To Live With Spouse During Divorce?

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

If you are considering getting divorced in California, you may be wondering if it is okay to live with your spouse while your are going through the divorce process.

This really depends upon the reason you are asking.  First, it may be by pure necessity that you continue to live with your spouse during the divorce process.

We are a licensed divorce document preparation firm that specializes in affordable California divorces and many of our clients continue to live with their spouses for financial reasons.  They just don’t have the ability to live separately until they get the divorce finanlized.  These couples will generally just maintain the status quo until their California divorce is completed.

If you are asking this question from a legal sense, we are not really going to address this.  If you are asking the question this way, you are probably wondering if  by living with your spouse, it will void the date of separation for purposes of community and separate property.  We are not going to address the legality of it from that viewpoint.

What you should know is that you can live together and still be separated.  You do not have to be living in separate homes to be considered separated.  There are some states that requires that but in California there is no requirement that you actually move out into separate homes.  It could just be that one of you sleeps on the couch or in another bedroom.

Because we are  not a law firm, most of our clients are attempting to work through their divorce as amicable as possible.  Most of them still live together out of necessity and will are working towards a resolution on how they are going to make it financially when they actually separate and their divorce is concluded.

So the answer is yes, it is okay to live with your spouse when you are getting divorced.  I have even had some clients complete their divorce and still live together.  Probably not the ideal scene, but I think you get the point.

We are a licensed divorce document preparation firm that specialized in California divorce.  Please give us a call to learn more about our fixed fee divorce pricing.

How To File Divorce In California And Serve Spouse In Another State

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

This article will discuss the issue of getting a divorce in California when your spouse lives in another state.  We will discuss how you can accomplish your divorce when you are living in different states or even different Countries.

First, let’s talk about jurisdiction.  Only one of you have to live in the State of California to file for divorce.  Just make sure you meet the criteria to file which means being a resident of the State of California for at least 6 months and of the County for the at least the last 3 months immediately preceding the filing of the Petition for divorce in California.

We have many clients who have been separated for a while and they are just getting around to filing for divorce in California.  Sometimes this results in one of the parties moving out of states.  Here is how we deal with this.

You will file your divorce case in the County you live in.  For instance, we are in Santa Clarita, which in in Los Angeles County.  Because we do not have branch court, all our filings go to the San Fernando Courthouse.

Once you have filed, the next step is to serve your spouse.  And you don’t have to hire a process server if your spouse will cooperate.  We use an not well known process called, “Notice of Acknowledgment of Receipt”.  This allows you to mail your initial filing documents to your spouse.  When they sign the acknowledgment and return it to you, file a proof of service.  This is an effective way to serve your spouse without having to hire a process server and is a perfectly acceptable way to serve these papers.

Once you have completed the service, the County in which you filed now has jurisdiction over your spouse and can make the final orders over your divorce case.

We get this question a lot and wanted to address it on our blog so hopefully folks with this same questions can find the answer here.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm that specializes in California divorce.  We provide a flat fee divorce service that takes care of your entire divorce from start to finish.

SCV Divorce Service Rapidly Expands

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We have been fortunate to say the least.  We opened our little Santa Clarita divorce service just over a year ago.  In that short year we have bootstrapped a small start up with literally nothing more than a desire to assist Santa Clarita families with affordable divorce options.

We believe we have found a niche service and one that was apparently desperately needed in Santa Clarita.  We did our due diligence and discovered that there was not an affordable divorce service in Santa Clarita.  We thought there was a market for our service and we were right.

We have seen rapid expansion and this week had to add additional office space and have added an office here in Santa Clarita.  We are still in the same building as we have found great success from using the Barrister Suites building off The Old Road north of Newhall Ranch Road.

We have gone from a single office with just one employee (me!) to now 6 employees and a second office.  I have moved myself out of the original office and find myself with a private office just as I did before we did not have any employees to speak of.

As we get our team in place, we are now geared up to help even more people with a better way of getting divorced.  One that will not leave you with high costs of using an attorney.

We plan on ramping up our marketing efforts now that we can handle a large load of clients.  Up until now, we have been careful to only take on the amount of clients we could successfully provide excellent customer service to.

If you find yourself needed to get divorce anywhere in Los Angeles County, we would be honored if you allowed us to assist you.  We have a great system in place to efficiently help you through your divorce and have the experience it takes to get the job done.

We Assist With Paternity Request For Orders & Responses | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Lately we had been doing a lot of motions for divorce in California , so I thought I would share with you the different types of divorce motions we have been helping people with.

When were talking about divorce motions were talking about what is known as request for orders. They used to be called order to show cause.

You can file a motion for a variety of reasons, and these motions can be either temporary or permanent, depending on when you file the motion.

For instance, if your divorce case is still pending and you file a request for order the orders he received from the court are generally going to be temporary until final judgment is entered in your case. If you divorce is already been finalized and you need to file a motion post-judgment, these orders will generally be permanent until further order of the court .

In the past few weeks, we have completed several motions for clients.

The first one a lot talk about was a paternity case. A paternity case is one where a couple has a child, but they are not technically married. In this particular case, the father had not seen the child for several years. Out of the blue the father decides he wants to see his son hires an attorney and files a motion for child custody and visitation.

The mother called our office and asked us what she could do as she did not want the father, who had not seen the sun for several years, get the requested orders he was asking for.

We had her come in and reviewed the motion he had filed with the court. After reviewing the fathers declaration. We spoke to our client and asked her regarding the truthfulness of fathers claims. We then drafted a declaration in support of mothers request to deny father’s request for child custody and visitation.

Basically what you have to do when filing a response to motion is to go line by line and address the other party’s claims and state your version of the facts. And that is what we did in this case. We went line by line and addressed the issues. The father had claimed and then inserted the facts as mother presented them.

Once we’re done drafting the declaration. We may have served a copy to the father’s attorney and filed a motion with the court.

When the mother went to the hearing, she was able to successfully have the father’s request for child custody and visitation denied based on a variety of reasons that we had discussed in her responsive declaration.

Obviously, this client was very satisfied with our service in preparing her responsive declaration for a paternity case. Of course we can never promise any particular result when we help you prepare a motion or response to a motion in your paternity or divorce case.

This is just one of the cases that we assisted on this week we are currently working on three more motions or responses for our clients.

If you need to file a motion for child custody, child visitation, spousal support, child support or make any other requests you doing your divorce, while it is still pending, or after your divorce is concluded, we can help you.

We are licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm specializing in divorce in the Santa Clarita Valley. We serve all the Los Angeles courts and can assist you with your divorce case.

Please feel free to give us a call at 661-281-0266 so we can discuss the issues at hand so we can determine if we can help you through your divorce matter.

5 Helpful Divorce Tips When Representing Self | Santa Clarita Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We have been getting a lot of exposure on our Santa Clarita Divorce Google+ Business Page and thought we would provide folks looking for divorce assistance with some helpful tips on a variety of issues people face when representing themselves.

We are always looking for ways to get information regarding divorce out, and we learned that we can redistribute our content from our blog to Google Plus and then link that content back to our blog.

When Does The Divorce Process Start?

Have you heard of the 6 month waiting period when going through divorce.  This is one of them most misunderstood issues of divorce.  In this video we discuss what you have to do to get the clock ticking on the 6 month waiting period and tell you when the divorce process actually starts.

What Divorce Documents Should You File First?

When people are going to get divorced, they often think they have to have everything figured out before they ever file the first divorce forms.  This is simply not true.  Divorce is a process and has several steps.  The fist step is to file your initial divorce papers so a case number can be issues and your case opened with the courts.  In this podcast we discuss exactly which forms you need to file to start your California divorce case.

How Spousal Support Works

If you think your spouse is going to want spousal support, you will want to watch this video.  We discuss how spousal support is determined and discuss the court’s spousal support calculator known as a Dissomaster Report.  Watch this video where we discuss how California spousal support is determined.

How To Apply For A Fee Waiver For Your Divorce

If you cannot afford the whopping $435 filing fees for divorce, there may be a way to get your court fees waived.  So far, we have a 100% approval rate for getting our clients court fees waived.  There are some specific income requirements you have to meet, otherwise you have to prove to the court that you cannot afford your court fees and still pay for the necessities of life.  In this video we show you how to prepare the divorce fee waiver.

Why You Should Not Attempt To Complete Your Own Divorce

The divorce process is long and complicated.  While technically you are allowed to complete your own divorce, many have tried and many have failed.  In this podcast, we discuss the issues you will be faced with and common problems of trying to file your own divorce case in California.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation service in Santa Clarita that specializes in divorce in California.  For a free phone consultation, please call us at 661-281-0266.

 

California Divorce Costs | Attorney vs. Legal Document Assistant | Santa Clarita

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

This article is about the California divorce process and the costs associated with getting divorced.  We compare the costs of divorce of using a divorce attorney and using the services of our divorce legal document preparation service in California.

Please feel free to watch the video below.  We also have included the transcribed version of the video.

Hi, this is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. Today we are doing another live broadcast and are also having this transcribed at the same time so we can embed this into our blog and uploaded this to an audio file. This is if our  computer can keep up with that.

So today we’re talking about the divorce costs and specifically going to talk about the difference between the cost of hiring an attorney to do your California divorce or hiring someone like my firm, which we are legal document assistants.

First off, let me tell you what a legal document assistant is. We are a licensed and bonded  legal document preparation firm and we just happen to specialize in the divorce process in California.  We are able to work without an attorney in our office which allows us to provide a more affordable service.

So let’s get into the divorce cost attorney versus legal document assistant. So obviously attorneys are doing  a much different job than we do. Mostly the divorce process is completing paperwork. There are occasions where you may need attorney and that’s if you need legal advice or if you need to be represented in court. Those are the two things that we are unable to do. Our license does not allow us to do that. And that’s because we are not attorneys. So if you feel that you will need legal advice or you’ll need to go to court to be represented that there you probably will need an attorney.

So lets back up just a bit and talk about the beginning of the divorce process in California. The California divorce process is mostly made up of paperwork.  You have you’re initial documents that need to be completed followed by doing your financial disclosures which these do no require an attorney. In fact, the divorce process in California can be completed entirely by a legal document preparation firm such as ours without any attorney supervision or without you ever needing to speak with an attorney.

Now we do have clients who start with us and they know they may need attorney down the road, but they want to get as much of the paperwork done as possible before going out and hiring attorney. So lets talk about the cost little bit. The average cost to have your divorce completed by an attorney and this is some research I’ve done online. You can find it as well if you were to look for it is about $20,000.  And that’s $20,000 per person, not the total of both parties.

We have clients who call us who have spoke with attorneys and they are to shocked by the amount of money that they are going to charge them for the divorce after they’ve talk to an attorney. They generally will call our company to find out if there are some other form options for the divorce case. So when we talk to them go weeks find them the difference you want people to understand that there is a difference between what attorneys doing what we do, but the end of the day we can help clients get through the entire divorce process from start to finish without any attorney supervision and without you ever needing to speak to an attorney.

Now if there it we run into trouble, and you do need to legal advice, not a problem. We can always refer you to an attorney in your area and you can get some legal advice a consultation if you need be, and then we can get right back to work for you. We can always just do that for you and you don’t have to hire the attorney to do that for you.

My name is Tim Blankenship. We are licensed and bonded legal document preparation service specialize in divorce. When you use our services. We worked on a flat fee basis. We do not use a retainer fee. We will quote you a flat fee for your divorce and that will be the total cost start to finish. We do everything for you from filing initial paperwork to prepare all the forms.  We taken down everything to the court for you and this is a complete service from start to finish, meaning from initial forms to service to judgment all for a flat fee.

You can go to our website at divorce661.com and we have some pricing packages you can see, based upon at the amount of work that needs to be done if you have children if you have property that needs to be separated those all are determining factors on the total cost of your divorce.  And feel free to look at our pricing page for more information.

Going back to retainers and how those work many people tell us that they spoke to an attorney and he told them the cost would be say $3500 or $4000.  Now what that is is that’s just a retainer that’s not the total cost of your divorce. The total cost your divorce is going to be whatever it takes at that attorney’s hourly rate to get the case finished. So if they’re asking for 3500 $4000 or $5000. That number doesn’t really matter because they are going to bill at their hourly rates if it’s $300,  $400, $500 an hour. They will bill you at that hourly rate until that monies extinguished and if your divorce cases is not finished you’re on the hook for the difference.

So that’s how divorce cases can end up in the $20,000 range. Based on the high attorney hourly rates. So if you’re looking for more affordable service to get your divorce completed and if your case is mostly amicable in nature, even if it’s not amicable, even if you know your going to need a divorce attorney, but you want to save some upfront costs on the document preparation we can really help you save some money by using our service.

So feel free to give me a call, my name is Tim Blankenship and our website is www.divorce661.com. My direct number is 661-281-0266.

Completing The California Divorce Summons & Petition [Slideshare & Podcast]

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

This article includes information on how to complete the California Summons and Petition.  It includes a Slideshare and podcast.  The text of this article are is the transcription of the audio.

Hi this is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com today we are talking about the upload we did to slide share. We wanted to go over the slide share and upload this audio to our slide share website what we have uploaded today which is the initial documents you’ll need to start your California divorce.

What we have here is the petition the summons the family law case cover sheet and a form called the declaration under uniform Child custody jurisdiction and enforcement act. These are the initial four forms you need to get your case filed in California and we uploaded these documents to slide share because these are documents that have some helpful information on them.

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What you’ll see is if you open up the slide share and you’ll find on our slide share.net site or on our website divorce 661.com on the petition and on all the forms there’s some helpful information on what to write down.  The biggest question people have when completing these documents is how to fill them out and have questions on what box do I check etc.  So we are going to briefly go over these forms you can use the slide share as an example when completing your document. We are going to talk about these a little bit.  First we have the petition and those on the petition that it tells you exactly what to do with the top with your name and address city state and ZIP Code where put the core information. Who’s the respondent who’s the petitioner and what box to mark for dissolution of marriage.

As you see them go down the form as far as statistical facts, declaration regarding children what to write if you have separate property, what to write if you have community property of petitioner’s requests.  At number six that lets you know what to fill out as far as irreconcilable differences. As far as number seven in petitioner’s requests because either giving information on who when and how to choose legal custody and physical custody they can use this form as a as a template if you will and will help you answer some of the questions you have as to filling out the petition.

The next form you’ll see in the slide share is the summons. The summons is fairly easy to complete this not a whole lot of information that needs to go on here. Basically just rename the attorney’s name and if you’re representing yourself which if your listing to this you probably are, you’re going to be your own attorneys and your information will go there.

Please note on the back of the summons there is some important information under standard family law restraining orders just make sure to take a look and read that, it is important to know.

The next form is the family law case cover sheet.  The cover sheet is only used to determine jurisdiction for the courts.  They want to  know where you live so they can make sure you’re in the right court. That form is fairly straightforward to fill out. It’s easy, not a lot to it,  just make you sure you sign it on page 2.

If you have children there’s one more form, it’s called the declaration under uniform child custody jurisdiction and enforcement act.  This form you’ll need if you have children and again is  fairly straight forward. They just want to know where your children have lived for the last five years because they will be making orders over your children they want to make sure they have the ability to do that.

So I hope you found this article and our our slide share helpful. We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm specializing in divorce, so if you want help and professional assistance in preparing your divorce I would be glad to help you out. We do provide these free tutorials and slide shares for those people who have more time than money, but if you are looking for professional divorce assistance anywhere in California please feel free to give us a call.  We would be happy to help you out because that’s what we do as a business.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com You can reach me direct 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.

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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.

Free California Divorce Consultations Another Way To Connect With Clients

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

We just got done completing a new podcast on Blog Talk Radio where we were talked about our free divorce consultations that we offer in California.

We were discussing that we are a content-based company. This means that we are constantly giving out free information on our websites logs YouTube videos and on our podcasts.

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Providing free divorce consultations in California is just one more way we are able to provide additional free information to people who are looking for answers to the questions they have about California divorce.

We feel that it’s important to provide information to our clients. This is how people are able to find our divorce service.

When people ask a question about divorce we want them to find our blogs when they’re looking for answers. We hope they are able to get the answers they are looking for, but were also looking to get in front of our clients so if they do need divorce assistance in California that they will call us when they need help.

Make sure to tune into our Blog Talk Radio show called Divorce Master Radio we are hosting a live radio event every Wednesday at 6 PM. You can call and ask questions will be talking about a new topic every week.

To learn more about our free divorce consultations in California make sure to listen to the blog talk radio show that we’ve embedded into this article.

Please give us a call if you have any questions about California divorce. We would be happy to answer your questions and see if our service would be something that you could use to help with your divorce. You can reach us at 661-281-0266.

Understanding The California Divorce Process [Live Broadcast 7-17-13]

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

Please join us for our live radio broadcast on July 17, 2013 at 6:00 p.m. “Understanding The California Divorce Process”.  This will be a live broadcast and we will be taking callers and answering questions.

Click this link on July 17, 2013 at 6:00 to listen on your computer.

We will be hosting these live radio broadcasts every Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., so make sure to tune in weekly.  You can find our Radio Show Page And Upcoming Broadcasts here.  You can also attend the live show from our show page.

In this broadcast we will be providing an overview of the California divorce process and answering frequently asked questions about divorce.

We get calls day in and day out and many times we are answering the same questions over and over.  So this will be a very informative broadcast.

Here is what we will be talking about.

  • An overview of the divorce process
  • The divorce forms
  • How long divorce takes
  • Information needed to file for divorce
  • Common problems when preparing your own divorce
  • Should you get help with your divorce or try to do it yourself

When the broadcast is over, we will be posting the recording to this page.  You can also find all our previous shows on our page that says “On The Air” at the top of site.

On the day of the live event, we will be doing a couple of different things.

First, we will be hosting the live radio show.  Callers can call in or chat and ask their questions.  In addition to the radio show, we will also be recording the event live on our Google Plus page.

If you are a Google Plus user and would like to watch the live video, you can find us on Hangouts On Air at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm specializing in divorce in California.  We are headquartered in northern Los Angeles County and can assist you anywhere in California.

If you have any questions you can reach us at 661-281-0266.  We look forward to hearing from you at our live broadcast.