California Divorce | Form FL-110 Summons Changes For 2014

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California Divorce Form FL-110 Summons Changes For 2014

This is just a quick video to let you know about the 2014 Form updates for Family Law for California divorce.

There are usually two updates a year and I just want to do a quick video on the form changes.

So far, for this first change of the year, there’s only one form that’s changed and this is the summons. This is FL-110 and looking at the form, it is much different as far as how it’s setup. I think the information there is exactly but it’s a lot easier to read and understand.

Specifically and I’m looking at the amount, what they’ve really done is they’ve really put an emphasis on the fact that on the back, on page 2 there are so much restraining orders that they need to be aware of.

They really make that a point to see that before you had to go to page 2 which looked like a lot of legal lease and I think those people just skip it over and when people come over to our office, I make sure to point out what those restraining orders are, they’re called ATRO’s and I’ll do another video right after this one where we’ll go through this and discuss the different issues with regards to the automatic restraining orders on the summons.

So I just wanted to make sure you knew that so if you’ve got an older form, if you’ve gotten something offline or online and you have the older form, it’s going to be rejected automatically if you try and file it with the court so make sure you have the form revision for the summons FL-110 dated January 1, 2014 and that will be on the bottom left-hand corner of the form.

Alright that’s it for today, if you have any questions and need help about your divorce in California, call the number 661-281-0266 or the number on your website divorce661.com for more information.

California Divorce | Different Ways To Address Child Custody & Parenting Plans

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California Divorce | Different Ways To Address Child Custody & Parenting Plans

Today we’re talking about what is included in a divorce judgment.

What does that mean? What is a judgment or agreement or stipulation? What does all that mean? It’s a question I get quite a bit when people call our office; they want to know what is going to be included in the divorce.

Or they’ll ask me questions like: Is child custody or parenting plan included – you know – these types of questions.

So I want to address what is entailed in the final product, or what is included as far as agreements in the final product of a divorce judgment, divorce agreement or stipulation or whatever you want to call it.

So first of all, the divorce is going to handle everything. It’s not just that you will end up divorced and single. The divorce is going to take care of dividing up all your properties, all your assets and debts that you accumulated during the marriage will be distributed.

You will have to make a decision if you’ve bought a house, if you’ve got cars or a 401 case, pensions and so forth – those things are going to need to be divided and that will be included in the property order portion of the judgment where you will say who is getting what and how things are going to be divided.

So property is one of the things that are addressed in the divorce.

The next thing is if you also have children that will also be discussed. We’re talking about child custody, child visitation, and child support.

That is something you’ll have to figure out as well. So you’re going to have specific child custody and visitation orders, are you going to have a specific parenting plan or you’re going to have an open plan, perhaps as you’re married you took care of the kids as you did whoever was available to pick them up, you can do that as well.

Or you can have a very specific “My husband will pick up the kids from Mondays through Thursdays, from this time to that time and he’ll have them, I’ll have them this time.” it can be very specific.

Child custody and visitation also known as a parenting plan is included in the divorce when you get divorced.

Child support also will be addressed as well as spousal support. So anything that you can imagine that will have to do with getting a divorce is what’s included in the divorce.

You aren’t just getting a divorce. You also have to address all the assets and debts, all the property, your children and anything else that had to do with your marriage will be addressed in the judgment.

Any other agreements that you want to have will be addressed in the judgment so once you get divorced, everything will be your separate property, you will have a parenting plan in place, and you will have spousal support and child support number set and that’s what I want to talk about today since I get that question quite a bit.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com, for more information. We can help you with your California divorce anywhere in California.

Thanks!

California Divorce | Default Setting & Prove Up Hearing

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California Divorce Default Setting & Prove Up Hearing

Today we’re going to talk about a default setting or what’s also known as prove up hearing.

This is when you go through a divorce and you submit a default judgment, a default judgment is where you file and serve the other party and they did absolutely nothing.

There are some cases where the courts just straight away approve the default and that’s usually in cases where there’s limited property or the property has been evenly divided or you’re not asking for anything out of the norm for a default judgment.

In some instances, the court will require you to attend a hearing even though the other party didn’t respond or isn’t participating, in that sense a default judgment.

We’ve had several cases recently where the court asked us, upon submitting the default judgment to resubmit the default judgment but with what’s called a default setting.

Basically what the court is saying is we’re not necessarily rejecting the judgment, we just have some questions about the judgment that we like to talk to the petitioner about, maybe get some testimony on record, ask them some questions procedurally to make sure they did things correctly.

Maybe ask some questions about the default and about the property and the kids and make sure they really want to get divorced.

We had two clients in court this past week. They both had prove up hearings or a default setting hearings. It lasted less than 15 minutes, they just want to ask you a couple of questions about the judgment.

One of the questions from the judge, for one of our clients, they reported to us, was asked “are you sure this divorce is irremediable?” meaning you’re not going to reconcile then get that back to us. That was one of the important questions apparently from the judge aside from some of the property and procedural type of questions.

If you’re asking anything out of norm in a default judgment or perhaps something like not dividing the property evenly which the courts require, you may want to set your judgment, you may want to submit the default setting paperwork along with the judgment so in case they want to talk to you, they can set the hearing. They’ll send you a notice to appear and they can ask you questions.

If you don’t and you’re judgment is outside the norm, outside the parameters for them to approve. Their only option is to reject it and send it back to you.

So if you have any questions about your default judgment or you think it might be incorrect. Submit it with the default prove up form. It’s a default setting. I think it’s FAM-031. Submit that with your judgment and if there’s something they want to talk to you about they’ll set a hearing.

And the nice thing about that is you’ll go to the hearing and in this two party’s cases, they went to the hearing, after the judge asked them the questions, the judgment was entered and they were divorced effectively, immediately at the hearing.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

We specialize in divorce in California so make sure to give us a call if you need help with anything. 661-281-0266. Talk to you soon.

California Divorce | Courts Now Issuing Notice Of Case Review Notices

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California Divorce | Courts Now Issuing Notice Of Case Review Notices

Today we’re talking about some changes the courts have recently, 2013 moving to 2014 started doing, when it comes to folks representing themselves in their divorce in California.

In the past, the courts didn’t really intervene or step in or even monitor really divorces cases to make sure they’re moving through the courts system properly and timely.

And what they’ve done now is they started setting certain milestones and putting certain time limits on when certain things needed to be done and I want to go over a few of those and talk about some notices you may get in the mail.

Number one, if you file your case and you don’t serve it within a reasonable amount of time and I think that time frame is sixty days. So let’s say you filed it on January 1st and now March 1st rolls around and you haven’t serve the divorce paperwork.

You can expect within sixty, ninety days of filing having not served your spouse and filing the proof of service to the court, you can expect to get a notice in the mail from the court saying essentially your case is not complete.

You haven’t filed your proof of service and there are some steps that needed to be taken and it’ll assign a court date and the court date is basically case management court date.

It’s just a quick hearing. They want to make sure that you know what you’re doing. They want to bring you on to court and say you need to file your proof of service, you need to serve. You understand what you’re doing. You need to move this forward.

And there’s going to be a court date. Generally, this particular letter will tell you that if you do certain actions by the date and file certain paperwork by that date. You don’t have to go to hearing. So, it’s nothing to be alarmed about.

It’s just the courts way and this is fairly new, stepping in to push the case forward to make sure those representing themselves are moving forward properly to the divorce in California.

If you like help with your divorce in California, please give us a call. My name is Tim Blankenship and that is all we do.

We specialize in California divorce process. We can help you anywhere in California so please make sure you’ll give us a call. The number is 661-281-0266. We’d be happy to help you out. We’ll talk to you soon.

California Divorce | A Brief Overview Of The Divorce Process

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California Divorce | A Brief Overview Of The Divorce Process

I just wanted to give a quick brief overview of the divorce process very topical.

I talk in detail, in great detail in a lot of my videos about specific forms and how to do things and processes but I’m just going to give a basic overview of how divorce works in California and this applies anywhere in California.

Same procedure anywhere and we do specialize in California divorce and we can help you with your divorce if that’s what you’re looking for.

But I want to just give you a basic overview. This is probably something I say twenty five times a day with every new client that calls us saying, “How does it work?”

This is what the divorce overview looks like. One of you needs to decide who’s going to file for a divorce. Once you do that, you’ll fill out the initial divorce documents which would be the summons and petition.

There are some other documents if you have children, perhaps a local form.

Those are the initial documents you need to file to open your case.

You take your documents down. You’ll file it with the court. You’ll get a case number issued. The next step is you need to serve your spouse.

You can serve your spouse in a couple of ways. It can be done by mail. I’ve done a video on this as well, on how to do it by mail. Or you can have a friend or anyone over eighteen other than you, personally serve the documents and then you’d file the proof of service with the court to let the court know that’s been done.

The next step is to complete your financial disclosures. This is the income and expense, schedule of assets and debts and then you have to file the document to the court to let them know that you have completed the disclosure process.

The purpose of disclosure is to let each of the parties know that this is what you believe to be the assets and debts of the marriage, both of you are responsible for doing that and this process cannot be waived.

Once that’s done, you effectively have the list of all the property, assets and debts that needed to be divided and you can then use that as a guide in how you’re going to divide up your things.

When you go and do that, you will prepare a judgment and that judgment will have everything on there that had to do with your marriage.

It’ll determine property rights. It’ll let the court know who’s getting what. If you have children, you’ll take about custody and visitation plans. You’ll also address spousal support and child support and those will go in the final judgment or agreement, however you want to call it and that will be submitted to the court for review and ultimately the judge will sign it.

Now, it sounds very simple and it can be but obviously the paperwork is confusing. That’s why we’ve been able to run an effective business in preparing divorce documents in California for folks.

So please don’t hesitate to give us a call if you’re looking for help to do that. We have established ourselves in California as the go to company for divorce document preparation.

We have streamlined systems in place. Several staff members waiting to help you out and we can help you anywhere in California so please feel free to give us a call.

You can visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/divorce661 or just go to divorce661.com where we have plugged in to our website our pod casts, our videos, tutorials and everything and more that you want to know about divorce in California.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com, please feel free to give us a call. I’d love to help you out.

California Divorce Service Providing Tips & Assistance On Youtube

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California Divorce Service Providing Tips & Assistance On YouTube

If you’re watching this video, you’re one of thousands of people that come across our YouTube videos every day in searching for a divorce service to help you with your divorce in California.

We have seen more and more people find us through YouTube than, I don’t want to say than our blogs because we have over a thousand articles in written format on our website and blogs, so we do get a lot of visitation or locating us that way but YouTube is obviously the number two search engine in search.

We have a lot of videos and people are finding us more and more through YouTube.

So, if you’re watching this video, make sure to subscribe to our channel at youtube.com/divorce661 and you’ll automatically be able to access all of the videos that we’ve shot, we’ve now hit nearly 300 videos as of this video.

We record several a week with helpful tutorials, tips, things we’re seeing in the courts, and things at that nature. Very helpful information that you can need either for yourself or for someone you may know that needs help with their divorce.

This is Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. Make sure to give us a call if you’d like help with your divorce. The number is 661-281-0266. Talk to you soon.

Are You Thinking About Doing Your Own California Divorce

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Are You Thinking About Doing Your Own California Divorce

Today we’re talking about “Should you do your own divorce?”

When is it a good idea to do it yourself? When is it a better idea to maybe hire a company to do that?

Though this last week we’ve done several videos talking to people who are perhaps in the decision making process if they should try and do their own divorce, or should they hire someone or should they get an attorney, people who haven’t started the divorce – that’s what this whole week has been about as far as videos and blog articles are concerned.

And this one, as far as the deciding whether you should do your divorce or not, we’re going to hit this from the topic of money. We’re just talking about money. Should you pay someone to do it or should you do it yourself.

I get calls all the time and I can tell kind of in the other end of the phone that these folks are just trying to get some information out of me and maybe they don’t have the money to do this, sometimes I just can get that feeling by the questions they’re asking and so forth.

When I talk to them, the first thing I’ll say is “look, are you currently employed, are you full employed” and so forth and if they say no or if they say they’re unemployed or something like that, I’ll tell them right off the bat, “this is how you should make your decision on whether to hire us or not.”

If you have more time than money, you know you’re not working, you’re unemployed etc. If you have more time than money, you should do your own divorce.

You can go to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/divorce661. We’ve done a video on just about every divorce form on how to complete it. The courts have a self-help center, it’s free.

The downside is the time commitment is enormous. You’re going to spend a lot of time with the self-help centers. You’re going to spend a lot of time frustrated trying to fill out the forms. You’re going to spend a lot of time doing these things.

But if you cannot afford to have a professional company like this to complete your divorce paperwork, obviously don’t hire us and do it because you have more time than money, it’s very simple.

Now, to the other end of that, if you are fully employed, if you’re working and you can’t take the time to go to court a dozen times over the course of let’s say six months, spending almost all day there.

If you don’t have time or the energy after working all day, to go to your computer at night and spend time on the weekend trying to figure out how to file a divorce form, driving down to the court house.Trying to file them, serve them and figuring out the process and procedure. All of that stuff.

If you have more money than time, I’m not saying you have money to throw away but if taking that time away from your family and job is going to cost you time, energy and frustration then you should hire a company like us to take care of business for you, so you can go on with your life and let the professionals take care of your divorce.

That’s the number one decision making factor on whether you should hire a company to do your own divorce from a money perspective is the time versus money scenario.

When people come to us, like our ideal client, they come to say “Tim, I can’t do this. I don’t want to try and figure all of this stuff. I’m working full time, I can’t miss work.” Those are the folks who use our service.

If you’re unemployed, go to the self-help centers. Use our YouTube channel, go online, spend the time and take the time to figure out on your own.

I hope that was helpful. Tim Blankenship, call the number on your screen. I’d be happy to talk to you and let you know what we can do for you. We do handle divorce cases all throughout California.

118: Another Reason We Don’t Like California Summary Dissolutions

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Another Reason We Don’t Like California Summary Dissolutions

I just got off the phone from a person who was attempting to do their own divorce and it was a very interesting call.

It wasn’t something that I had come across or I had heard of before so I wanted to make sure I jumped into the camera real quick and I literally just got off the phone with them so I wanted to discuss the issues with this.

And this is pertaining to the summary dissolution. If you’ve watch any of my other video regarding summary dissolution, you know I’m not a big proponent of them and I’ll give you several alternatives to the summary dissolution option.

People think it’s a good option, I don’t think it is and here’s one more reason why I don’t like the summary dissolution.

This lady called me, she had filed a summary dissolution and she had it rejected by the court. The reason it was rejected by the court is because she had marked on there that she had been married for more than five years. Well if you’re looking at the rules, which are many, to qualify for summary dissolution. You realized that you cannot be married for more than five years.

Well it was actually a mistake that she made. What she did is she listed a date of marriage and then she listed the date of separation. But on the date of separation, she had listed the date she is filling out the forms by accident instead of putting the actual date of separation.

Which if she had used the correct date of separation, she would have been under five years and perhaps there wouldn’t have been any issues with her divorce.

Because she filed it with the incorrect date of separation than showing it to be over five years, the judge rejected it.

So, what she did was she amended her paperwork, change the date of separation and re-submitted it and it got rejected a second time and the judge said upon rejecting it the second time, you need to file a regular divorce.

So, after speaking with her I realized what had happened. Here’s what the judge is assuming, “oh, you’re going to resubmit it and change the day of your separation? We don’t believe you.

We think that the day of separation is the day you filed the summary dissolution on the first time and you’re just changing the date now so you can resubmit your summary.”

Basically they didn’t believe her and that’s what that boils down to. And now they’re telling her she needs to file a regular divorce.

Here’s the problem with that. She had already worked on the summary paperwork, she had already submitted it, and she was already at that judgment stage.

Now, having to file a regular divorce, she’s going to have to fill out all the regular forms, summons and petition, she’s going to have to file it as an amended using that same case number.

She’s going to have to serve those documents on her spouse, wait another thirty days and then file her judgment and still have to wait the full six months after the date of service of the documents before she can be divorced.

So, what a huge set back, she have already been working on this for several months and it was at the judgment phase and now she’s set back months. Have to go through the whole process again, the regular divorce process.

Filing, serving, waiting six months and this is just one more reason why we don’t advocate using the summary divorce forms in California. There’s a much better way of doing it.

I just wanted to share that with you quickly. Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. If you need help with your divorce in California, call the number on the screen. 681-281-0266.

I’d be happy to help you. Talk to you soon.

4 Reasons Your California Divorce Request To Enter Default Is Rejected

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4 Reasons Your California Divorce Request To Enter Default Is Rejected

Today we’re talking about reasons why you may get your request to enter default rejected.

We had a new client come to use after having their request to enter default rejected and there’s a specific reason why it is rejected and I’ve talked about that in detail because it was something new we hadn’t seen.

But I’m going to go over the top four reasons why your request to enter default will get rejected.

Number one, if your spouse filed a response, you can’t file a request to enter default. It’s only a default if there is no response filed so if a response was filed then your request to enter default will be rejected.

Keep in mind when you submit your request to enter default, it’s not like the other forms that you filed. It doesn’t get stamped right away and entered with the court. It has to sit on the clerk’s desk for a while in a pile and it usually takes them a couple of weeks, sometimes a month to get to.

So, if you’ve waited the thirty days, which is required after your spouse was serve to file your default, it may be as much as another month before it actually gets entered.

Even though thirty days have passed, your spouse can still go in and file a response and so you’d get this back rejected because the response will be entered immediately while the request to enter default would not.

Number two, since filing is a substitution of attorney, filing a notice of change of address. What this is referring to is if you file a request to enter default and the address is different.

Let’s just say your spouse moved and it’s different than the address on your petition, then you’re going to have to either do a change of address or you need to explain to the court why you’re serving the request to enter default at a different location other than the petition.

The next one is if you just simply make an error on the form. It says, the request to enter default is incorrect as to the case number. The name of the parties, the date, the signature or the request to enter default is premature. Meaning, you filed it before the thirty days elapsed.

Number four, proof of service is needed or is incomplete, so you cannot file a default unless you’ve filed your proof of service.

You file the documents, you serve the documents, and you file the proof of service telling the court you served the documents. Thirty days goes by, and then you file the default. If you don’t do it in that order it will be rejected. If you don’t file the proof of service, it’ll be rejected.

If you file the proof of service incorrectly or filled out the proof of service incorrectly, it will be rejected.

That was the top four reasons on top of the one I already mentioned in detail. You can go back a video and find it. It was in regards to having the same address on the petition when filing a default and the courts want to know why. So you can go back and watch that video as well.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. If you have any questions please call the number on your screen. I’ll be happy to help you with your divorce anywhere in California.

3 Ways You Can Serve Your Spouse During California Divorce

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3 Ways You Can Serve Your Spouse During California Divorce

Today we are talking about the three ways you can go about serving your spouse in a divorce.

It seems to be a big misconception that you have to personally serve your spouse the initial divorce papers.

If you look at court procedure, you go to your local court website. It’s going to tell you exactly that. It’s going to say, you file your papers, and then you serve your papers and then it has to be served by personal service, which means anyone over eighteen other than you or by process server.

People will routinely hire a process server or they’ll use the local marshal or sheriffs in the court to do their service and that’s just not necessary. We handle high volume of divorce cases and we very rarely serve our documents by personal service.

The only ones that we do are the ones who are starting out in adversarial tone and that’s the only way service will be accomplished.

But if you’re going through an amicable divorce, you guys are working through your divorce in an agreeable fashion as best as you can. You can serve your documents by mail.

Now, when I say by you can do it, not you, it still applies where you are the only one who cannot do it.

So, you can have a friend mail the filed documents to your spouse along with a form called notice of acknowledgement and receipt and this is basically a form that will be received by the other party and they’ll sign acknowledging receiving the divorce forms.

That document has to be mailed back to the person it was mailed from so then you can file the proof of service with the court saying we serve by mail, by notice of acknowledgement of receipt.

That’s how we serve probably 90% of our documents in our amicable divorce cases in California.

The other way is if your spouse is out of state, you can use the notice of acknowledgement of receipt and do it by mail or you can use certified mail process. They’ll allow you to send it certified mail.

Return receipt requested so when the post office delivers it and they sign saying they handed it to your spouse.

When you get that card back you would file that with the proof of service and that would be a sufficient service in you and that would be the method that you would use if they’re out of state.

Those are the three different ways that you can serve. Personal service should be a last resort unless that’s the only way left to go.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

Give us a call. We can help you with your divorce case anywhere in California. Talk to you soon.