Divorce Paralegal Service In Hollywood Hills California

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Divorce Paralegal Service In Hollywood Hills California

Today we are talking to our friends in Hollywood Hills and I just wanted to let you know about our divorce service that we have for you.

We are a licensed and bonded legal document preparation firm and divorce is all we do. We specialize in divorce, we’ve done that for several years now and we do this all throughout California but this is specifically for you.

People are looking for an affordable way to get through the divorce process. These folks mostly are going through amicable divorce cases.

They’re trying to get through their divorce without hiring an attorney, without spending tons of money on their divorce.

If that sounds like you, then you need to give us a call. We’ve been doing this for several years as I’ve mentioned and we’re able to get you through the entire divorce process for one low flat fee.

You can go to divorce661.com for more information on our pricing.

Now, here’s a brief overview of what we will do for you.

As a licensed document preparer we can do everything and attorney can do except to go court for you and give you legal advice.

So we will prepare all the documents for you, we will take them down to court and file them for you, serve them, we do all the financial disclosures and all the processes and procedures that are required by the court.

We’ll even prepare your final judgment which includes the distribution of assets and debts, basically who’s getting what stuff, custody and visitation, a parenting plan and spousal support and child support determination if that’s what you’re looking for.

Again, we do that all for a low flat fee. We’ve been doing this for several years and we really have become your go-to-people for divorce in California.

Now, what you will get when you use our service is a full service process, so you won’t have to worry about what forms to fill out, how to file it, what the steps are, what to do next, we take care of all that for you.

And that’s really one of the benefits, you can go on with your life if you’re a busy professional, not spend time on the weekends and evenings trying to figure out what forms to fill out and get frustrated by the process.

We have years of experience, working for the courts.

We worked for the courts for several years, we worked for family law firms for several years and we’ve been having running this business for several years and we have a lot of knowledge from all of these different avenues, from the courts, from the law firm and from assisting people representing themselves.

We’ve seen lots and lots of different scenarios and can help you get through your divorce in most cases. So make sure to call, I’d be happy to give you a free phone consultation. My number is 661-281-0266 or you can go to divorce661.com for more information.

California Divorce Summons Standard Family Law Restraining Orders

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California Divorce Summons Standard Family Law Restraining Orders

Today we’re talking a little bit more about the FL-110 the summons.

In the previous video we just recorded, we mentioned that it did change for January 2014. And I want to talk a little bit more about standard family law restraining orders which if you have copies of the summons it’s on page two.

I want to talk about some of these restraining orders that are going to affect what they kind of mean. So what it says is “starting immediately, you and your spouse or domestic partner are restrain form”, one, removing the minor children of the parties from the state. And then it goes on with a little more detail.

Number two, cashing, borrowing against, cancelling, transferring, disposing of or changing of beneficiaries of any insurance and then it talks about the different insurance policies. Transferring, encumbering, hypothecating, or any other way disposing of property, real or personal whether community or separate and then it goes on.

You can read this one through four. So, essentially they don’t want you to grab the kids and take them out of state. They don’t want you to cash or cancel or transfer as far as your insurance is.

So, basically you’re supposed to live on your spouse as a beneficiary until the divorce is concluded. As far as the community property and separate property issues is basically just don’t do any of these thing, don’t close accounts, transfer money, etc.

But then it says without the written consent of the other party or an order of the court.

What I tell people is aside from all these restraining orders, you can do all of these things if you are in agreement with your spouse, that’s really what it boils down to.

It doesn’t mean you can’t start dividing up your property while you’re going through the process of divorce.

If you have an agreement, hey we’re going to split this account, we’re going to start selling the cars and transferring titles, and doing those things. You’re totally welcome to do that as long as it’s by agreement.

These restraining orders are put in place to protect one of the parties, if someone whose going to do something in a mean way to try and remove the kids or take them off the beneficiaries or take all the money out of the account so there’s no access to money by the other party.

So, that’s kind of the spirit of the law of why these rules for the summons you want to do by the most part with agreement, you can do in dividing your assets and debts throughout the divorce process.

I just want to clarify that some people when they come in they say “Tim, we want to start dividing I per stuff”, it’s totally amicable and this says we can’t do it.

If it’s by agreement, it’s acceptable to do because this is just between you and your spouse, if this is going to remain outside of the court so, no reason you can’t start getting those things separated prior to the divorce being finalized.

Tim Blankenship of divorce661.com, if you need help with your divorce in California please give me a call at 661-281-0266 or go to divorce661.com for more information.

Los Angeles Divorce Fee Waiver Hours Of Acceptance

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Los Angeles Divorce Fee Waiver Hours Of Acceptance

Today we are just giving you a little update about the fee waiver process with the superior courts and this is specifically regarding the Los Angeles County Courts.

We recently send a client down to the San Fernando branch of the Los Angeles Superior Court for divorce filing with a fee waiver and the clerk gave them a little note and it says: “Fee waivers are now only accepted between 8:30 AM and 11:00 AM or 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM Monday through Friday and of course aside from court holidays.”

So, Monday through Friday 8:30 AM to 11:00AM or 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM. I’m assuming the reason for this change is for the courts lunch break, that being the judge’s lunch break and the judge’s assistant known as the JA.

What happens when you go to file a fee waiver, usually it can be done with the clerk, the filing clerk at the window.

But sometimes they only have a certain abilities in approving fee waivers. Sometimes they need to send you to the actual court room to speak to the clerk in the court room, I think they have a little bit more power to overwrite things or maybe to get a judge to take a look at it if they have questions.

So, sometimes you’ll end up having to go up to the court room to the judge’s assistant, the clerk in the court room for them to make approval of the fee waiver.

They must have had a lot of folks coming in that were questionable fee waivers or kind of right on the bubble where the clerk on the counter couldn’t approve it and need to send people up to the court room so you wanted to make people know when you’re going to file a fee waiver in Los Angeles superior court.

8:30 AM to 11:00AM and 1:30 PM to 3:00PM so not a whole lot of time in there to get a fee waivers done. Just make sure if you are going to go, that you go during those times.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com, we specialize in California divorce. Give us a call at 661-281-0266 if you need any help.

Why File California Default Divorce When Parties Agree

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Why File California Default Divorce When Parties Agree

Today we’re talking about specifically filing a default judgment even though the parties have agreed.

There are time when you wanted to do a default style case, this is where you file, serve your spouse and the other spouse does absolutely nothing.

One of the cases that we find this helps is if you have no property, you have no children or limited property or you can have children but it is easier if there’s no children and if the property is separate property is you can purposely do a default even if the parties agreed.

I’ll give you an example of the client today. She came in, they had very little property, what property she did have was separate property, meaning it was not subject to division and no children and the spouse was here but did not want to participate and said, I’ll agree to whatever she wants.

We strategically set this up. That’s the word I was looking for. Strategically set this up as a default. He knew exactly what she was asking for in the divorce.

He had no issue with it so he’d chose to not respond intentionally and we’re going to allow this to go through default.

Default again is where a party files, serves the spouse and the other spouse does nothing. Doesn’t enter into a written agreement and doesn’t respond and does literally nothing and that can strategically be done if the parties are in agreement.

And there’s other reasons to do it but we are specifically talking about doing this in a strategic way to either save money on court fees why should the other party response and pay for response fee if which is as much as $435. Why should he do that if he’s in agreement with everything.

So, we sat down, we drafted the default, knowing it’s going to be a default judgment, drafted the judgment and we’re going to submit that to the court and everyone’s happy. They’re in agreement but they are putting it through as no agreement to save some money so the other spouse don’t have to be bothered with paperwork or be involved whatsoever.

If you any questions about whens it is best to use a default judgment or any other type of judgment, please give us a call, I’d be happy to help you with your divorce in California.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com, 668-281-0266.

Turning California Divorce Document Preparation Business Upside Down

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Turning California Divorce Document Preparation Business Upside Down

This is kind of just a plug about our business not a whole lot of incites like the rest of our several hundred videos that we’ve normally done.

I just want to kind of let folks know that we have been acknowledged as one of the few individuals, me specifically who has been able to take this business of legal document preparation from what is normally been a part time or on the side type of job.

Legal document assistants are generally there to help lowly income individuals who can’t afford attorneys, basically help those people through a certain legal matters.

And I’ve turned that idea upside down and what we have done is instead of going after low income families, because honestly there are hundreds of programs, pro bono attorneys and system in place for those folks.

I’ve turned this on its head and we now have created the legal document profession, at least from our view point, no one else is doing this yet aside from us and our target market is people with higher incomes.

People who would normally use an attorney, who don’t want to spend the money on an attorney or to have amicable case where divorce attorneys just aren’t necessary. And we’ve taken a lot of business away from attorneys.

It’s not that we are harming them, we don’t compete with them. In fact, we don’t do the same thing. We don’t give legal advice or go to court.

We’re handling cases where people who are trying to get through their divorce on their own, they want to save some money.

So we’re not helping the low income or people without money. We’re helping people who want to save money, who probably have money for attorney but there’s no need for it or they don’t want to spend the money on an attorney.

By turning this upside down we have established our self and for probably the first times are running a successful legal document preparation business and helping people in the higher income earners get through divorce. Complicated cases, the idea is that there is somewhat amicable and trying to begin through it together.

The reason I bring this up is I receive a phone call from someone who does this as well, what we do and they basically said they’ve been doing this for 18 years and they have been able to turn this into a successful full time business and I think what it boils down to is flat out turning this process on its head.

Not going after the target market that this industry was specifically built for and what honestly the association called the California association of legal document assistants.

They promote that this business should be for low income earners and we have gone against the grain on that 100% and probably one of the first times turn this into a business model that really helps people that don’t have a help available to them.

Talking about, if you are low income there are hundreds of program out there, free services, pro bono services, self-help centers, etc. If you are the 80% or 90% of people who don’t qualify for free services, that is the biggest chunk of society that we’re going after.

And it’s been a very successful model for us. So, I apologize for the plug on our awesomeness but I just wanted to let our folks know that’s what we’re doing, that’s what we’re here for and we have now been deemed the go-to-folks in California for affordable divorce cases and assistants. Please give us a call at 661-281-0266.

My name is Tim Blankenship. You can go to divorce661.com for more information.

Terminating Income Withholding Order For Child Support California Divorce

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Terminating Income Withholding Order For Child Support California Divorce

Today I want to talk a little bit about terminating an income withholding order for child support and how to go about doing that.

If you have been divorced and the divorce is over and there has been an order for child support with an income withholding order, so let me back up and explain what that is.

If you’re reading this, you probably know what it is. You got divorced, the divorce got finalized for a period of five, ten, fifteen, who knows how many years you have been paying child support and the child support has been taken out directly out of your pay through your employer via withholding orders called an income withholding order.

If you’ve done that, you need to look in to the future in advance and seen when child support is going to terminate per the order.

In most cases it’ll say something to the effect of that you have to pay child support until your son or daughter turns 18 and is no longer a full time high school student.

You have to have one or two conditions met. Make sure to check the language, it should be pretty standard. There’s one or two other things that could keep you having to pay child support so make sure to take a look at that.

But that’s generally the rule, up until 18 and high school student. Once those two things are met then you can terminate child support if that’s what your order says.

I had a gentleman come in today and in advance he is doing the right thing, he’s daughter is going to turn 18 in two months and she is already graduated from high school so, as soon as she turns 18, effectively he can terminate child support.

The reason you want to do this in advance is because you have to go through the motions with the court to get a new court order or zero child support order. So right now, his employer is taking out the money from his pay check.

Unfortunately, the courts aren’t proactive. He can’t go to court before her daughter turns 18 and say, ‘look my daughter is going to be 18 in a few months, please sign a new order so I can get it to my employer now so they can stop paying child support right on the money, right when the time comes.

What he has to do is, he needs to file a motion, he needs to get a court date immediately following her 18th birthday which is what we’re doing for him. So, literally the day after the birthday of his daughter he’s going to go to court, show a birth certificate, she turned 18 yesterday and here’s her certificate or here’s her diploma from high school.

The point of this video is, make sure you do this in advance. If you’ve already got in to the point where you no longer should be paying child support and there’s an income withholding order. Expect to pay child support for another two to three months.

Reason being is it’s going to take that long to get you in to court, get the judge to sign the termination order on the income withholding order and get that filed, signed by the judge and served on your employer. So, keep in mind, do this in advance you are going to want to file a motion around 60 to 90 days before she can get that date you want right after they turn 18.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com, we specialize in divorce in all of California. Feel free to give me a call, I’d be happy to help you with any motions, divorce and things at that nature. 661-281-0266 or you ca go to our website at divorce661.com

Post Judgment California Divorce Motions Must Be Personally Served

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Post Judgment California Divorce Motions Must Be Personally Served

Today someone had written a question on our blog wondering what items have to be personally served and which items can be mail served and it can get a little tricky but this video is specifically about post judgment motion.

So, what that means is post judgment, the judgment is already according to the divorce case and you want to modify something such as child support, spousal support or virtually anything you need to personally serve your motion.

The process would be to file your paperwork, get your court date and then personally serve it. Anyone over 18, process server preferably to make sure it’s done correctly and that has to be done by personal service.

The reason being is or I should say as supposed to when you are going through the divorce both parties knew there is a process going on. They are going through a divorce process.

So, a lot of these things can be mail served once the opening documents have been personally served, everything else can be done by mail for the most part.

After there has been a period of time for divorce whether it will be a month or six years or ten years, the court requires that you personally serve any new motions. Because they don’t want to assume that the person still lives there and you mail serve them and they don’t get it.

They want to make sure that it is actually served on the party, the want to know what address was served to them for purposes of service of process, they want to make sure that they are actually served and they knew that they should have attended the hearing.

Keep in mind, post judgment, anything you want to change in your divorce after the judgment has been entered. If you file a motion, you need to have it personally served.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com, specializing in California divorce. Give us a call if you need some help.

 

Is Doing Your Own California Divorce A Good Idea

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Is Doing Your Own California Divorce A Good Idea

This is the fifth and perhaps last video in the series this week discussing and helping people have the conversation with themselves if they should do their own divorce or not.

We’ve talked about what happens when your divorce doesn’t go as planned if you’re self-representing yourself, who you will turn to when you have questions about divorce.

Why is it important to get you divorce paperwork done right the first time, should you do your own divorce, and we talked about money, when it’s a good idea to hire someone, when it’s a good idea to do it on your own.

And today we are talking about, is doing your own divorce case a good idea. This may seem very self-serving. We suggest that you don’t do your divorce.

We’re not saying hire an attorney, we’re saying hire us obviously. We’re saying hire a professional company paralegal service, legal document assistant service which we are to prepare your divorce case for you.

It’s going to get done right the first time, we’re going to go down the court, we’re going to fill out the forms, we’re going to file them, serve them, explain all the process and procedures, we’re here to answer all of your questions.

We have all the courts software, anything the attorneys have, software wise we have it as well. We can do everything, start to finish so you can go on with your life.

Divorce is going to be an emotional roller coaster as it is. It’s not something that you want to try and figure out paperwork wise so obviously we’d suggest it’s better to do it with a professional company like us.

That’s kind of our take on things. This has been like a wrap up for the week, and helps you people to decide if it’s a good idea or not to do their own divorce.

Some of the things I may have talked on hundreds of different videos about the pluses and minuses of doing your own divorce.

If you have more time than money then maybe you want to do it yourself but there are so many things that can go wrong with the paperwork.

There’s a lot of information out there about yes, you can do your own divorce but from what we see we do so many cases every year that we have clients call us left and right who’ve attempted and spent months and months and years trying to do their own divorce and failed.

And they all tell me: “Tim, if I had found your service before I ever got started it would’ve been a life saver.” and looking back they would have never attempted to do their divorce on their own.

So I think I can only share people that have gone before you and who have told me: “Tim, I would not have done this had I known that there is a service that could take care of everything like you guys do for us.

Those people eventually will hire us once they find our service and we have to pick up where they left off, retrace their entire case, make sure everything was done right, if not, we fix it because it’s usually what happens and then wrap up their case for them.

That’s kind of how I would explain coming to that decision or coming to that conclusion of whether you should try it on your own or hire us.

Look back at the people that have hired us and people that have attempted to do it on their own and their kind of thought process on what they would do knowing what they know now.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. Anywhere in California, we can help you with our divorce, call our number at 661-281-0266 and I’d be happy to talk to you and let you know what we can do for you in your particular case.

Talk to you soon!

I Started My California Divorce And Never Finished It

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I Started My California Divorce And Never Finished It

Today we’re talking about for those folks who have started their divorce and never finish.

That’s the service we provide and something we can help you fix. We’re continuing to get lots and lots of folks who started their divorce either months, years, or decades ago. Honestly, I guess the oldest one we did was 18 years ago, they filed and never finished their case.

But, that is the service we provide. We can essentially pick up where you left off and wrap things up for you. I’ll give you an example.

We had a client call from Utah who lived in California filed divorce several years ago, didn’t finished the paperwork and now has moved to Utah and needs to finish his case in California because it’s still an open case and California still has jurisdiction over all the issues of the divorce.

They’ve gotten about a quarter away through the process, they’ve filed and serve the paperwork and that was just about it. They still need to do a lot of work.

The way this works is when you call us, we’ll have you send over what paperwork you have, if you have it. If you don’t have it, we’ll go down to the courts for you and we’ll get the filed documents so we can see what has been done and see if anything needs to be amended.

Then we can determine what’s needed to be done moving forward and it doesn’t matter where you’re at, if you’ve moved out the county, out of the state, out of the country, we can still wrap things up for you.

We can kind of be that local boots on the ground company that can get everything finished up for you.

If you are one of the folks that started your divorce and you never finished it please give us a call. We do and can help you get your divorce finalized in California.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. Feel free to call us for free consultation or go to our website and you can call us at 661-281-0266

How To Submit Default California Divorce Judgment With Spousal Support

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How To Submit Default California Divorce Judgment With Spousal Support

Today I want to talk to you about something interesting, something that happened this week with a client of ours. This is in regards to a default judgment with spousal support.

We had a client come in several months ago wanted to file for a divorce who’s supposed to be amicable and as things progressed, it turn out to be not so amicable. Not that the other party is contesting anything but they didn’t want to participate in the divorce at all.

The party that we were working with was unemployed and the other party, her spouse was employed so we wanted to get her some spousal support because they had been married for quite some time.

Well, what happen is we submitted the default judgment and we set it for what’s called a prove up or default setting because we are asking for a specific amount of spousal support because she was not aware of what her spouse’s income was exactly.

So, we set the default hearing, she attended the hearing just the other day and I wanted to share with you what the judge told her.

Essentially, because she didn’t have any specific information pertaining to his income, the judge basically said she is not going to word her any spousal support and what the judge wanted is some type of indication of what he was making.

For instance, perhaps some pay stubs of course would be helpful. Obviously if she had a tax return or something along those lines, perhaps some bank statements. Because she have been separated for so long she had absolutely no source or proof of what he was making.

So, the judge simply said, I don’t know what your husband makes, therefore I cannot make an order for spousal support. And she issue a zero support order, she approved the judgment so the divorce was approved and then they reserve jurisdiction of spousal support.

What that means is she is going to have to go back to court at some time in the future whens she can find out what he is making in order to ask for spousal support. Just keep that in mind if you’re going through a default. It’s one of the downsides to a default. I know a lot of people do it because you don’t have to pay the other filing fee.

It was developed for filing and getting through your divorce when the other party doesn’t participate. That’s what the default is for.

But there are some downsides to it and this is one of them. Had husband participated, then he would have had to do his financial disclosures and we would have known what his income was and there could have been an order for spousal support.

When you’re going through divorce in California, there are several ways you can do this, by default, by hybrid which is an agreement without a response, so it’s default with agreement or just uncontested where both parties participate.

There are benefits to both or to all three and there are also some negatives to all three, really depending on your scenario, your circumstances can dictate what’s the best way to go. If you have any questions on that make sure to give us a call.

We specialize in affordable divorce in California, my name is Tim Blankenship, 661-281-0266 or you can get more information off our website at divorce661.com.