Santa Clarita Small Business Training & Assistance Small Business Development Center

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Santa Clarita Small Business Training & Assistance Small Business Development Center

This is basically a shout out, this is not what a normal videos that we do for our business here. We are a divorce document preparation firm in Santa Clarita.

Today I’m just giving a shout out if you will to this small business development center at College of the Canyons.

I’ve recently acquired their services, it’s a free service where they help small business owners with the variety of things as far as doing a business plan, how to secure capital for your business.

How to start a business, you don’t even have to have an idea of a business and you can use their services.

The nice thing is they are supported or backed I guess you would say by the SBA so it’s a completely free service. From what I understand, they get paid by achieving milestones. So, if they say “hey we’re going to help you write a business plan.”

And that’s what I’m using them for, now I went to the orientation and even though I’ve been in the operation for three years, I never really put together a business plan because we’re growing so quickly.

I wanted to get a business plan in place, so moving forward we make sure we’re taking the right steps because in the orientation I will tell you the rate that we small businesses fail goes up every year and it is crazy.

I don’t have those with me but it was very interesting. So I want to make sure I have my business plan in place.

I just went to my first intake meeting, where they kind of find out where you are at. Do you have a business, where you’re at, what you’re sales are, do you have employees, things like that.

Kind of set a base line and find out what you need is very informative and I’ll be going to meet with a counselor who’s going to help me with my business plan and make sure that’s tightened up and then again there’s a variety of things you can do.

They also have workshops that you go to and they’re very helpful. The website is COCSBDC.org. They have a tons of information on their website and the reason I wanted to do this video is because in orientation, they made it very clear that they’re hoping that they get a lot more referrals to the small business development center because most of the people as I went there found them on the internet.

Just searching for probably small business assistance or how to write a business plan and their website does come up but they mention they’re trying to get a lot more referrals.

When I was in the orientation it was probably 90% of us. There are probably 20 or 30 of us who strictly found them online and not referral.

So, I’m hoping that this video will help spread the word. I’m going to do many more just as kind of a help flowed or get the word out that they’re there specially if you’re a small business like me. It would have been nice if I had known they existed three years ago.

Because I completely did this on my own without a plan other than the plan in my head and if you’re a small business you know how that goes.

Call them. Let them know that I sent you. I’m doing this purely just to get the word out. Let them know that I referred you. There’s no benefit to me but I’m sure they would appreciate knowing that you found them other than on the internet on their website.

My name is Tim Blankenship. We are a small business here in Santa Clarita. We help people get through the divorce for a flat fee. If you ever need our service, you can reach us at 661-281-0266 or at divorce661.com.

How To Terminate Income Withholding Order For California Divorce

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How To Terminate Income Withholding Order For California Divorce

This week we’ve been talking about income withholding orders. This is for child support and spousal support.

This is an order you can get from the court that can be served on an employer for purposes of withholding support so that can be paid directly to the person receiving support.

We’ve talked about on how to fill that out in previous videos, now we’re talking about how to cancel an order. How to terminate an order for either child support or spousal support and why it’s important.

Just as you would in filling out a new income withholding order for support, you will do the same thing on it and you will mark the box that says terminate the income withholding order. And you would go through the same process and I’ll go over that quickly here.

Fill out the income withholding order, mark the appropriate boxes, mark you’re terminating support, file it with the court, get the order from the judge, and then serve it on the employer by certified mail.

That’s the way you would terminate the support.

Now, when are you going to want to do this?

If you have let’s say, obviously an existing order and your employer is paying out either every income and that’s going to be changed, there’s a modification or spousal support terminated or let’s say the kids turn eighteen and you’re paying child support.

You have to keep in mind that those orders and the withholding order does not automatically just terminate when it’s eighteen. You have to go back to court, get a new order and then you have to go in and re-serve that on your employer.

Now, keep in mind, you can get the judges sign an income withholding order terminating support without a modification done.

That means you’re going to have to file a motion with the court and get the paperwork in to show the court, “hey my kids are eighteen” for instance. Get him to change the order to zero, and then you have to fill out a new income withholding order terminating support, and then get that ordered by the court and then submit it to your employer.

Now, the issue with this is that the time frames are not going to work really well because the judges aren’t going to sign an income withholding order terminating child support until the kids turn eighteen and you can’t file that until the kids turn eighteen.

So you’re going to end up having some amount of over payment in child support because of the time as processing the paperwork with the court. Getting a new order, getting it served on your employer before they stop pulling out the child support.

It happens every time. We do this a lot. We can help you fill out the income withholding order, we can help you get your motion in to modify in support or child support.

But you want to get that in as quickly as possible, trying to time your hearing when the kids are actually turn eighteen.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. We do help with California divorce cases everywhere in California so feel free to give me a call. My number is 661-281-0266.

How To Prepare Your California Divorce Judgment Forms

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How To Prepare Your California Divorce Judgment Forms

Today we’re talking about how to prepare your divorce judgment in California and specifically how to submit your divorce judgment.

First I want to just comment. I had a client come in recently and they went down to the self-help center, if you’re trying to prepare your own divorce, you may have gotten to this point where you filed the papers, you serve the papers, you’ve been to court a dozen times and you’ve hopefully done everything right up to this point and now you’ve gotten to the judgment phase.

Judgment is basically the agreement, the stipulation. It’s known by a couple different terms.

I had a client come in who had attempted to do their own divorce and this happens very frequently, people will call us at various stages. The very beginning, somewhere in the middle, at the end, when they’ve done everything and failed, they’ll call us.

This client came in and they brought the documents from the court, I don’t know if you can see this but this is probably forty, fifty pages. I should have counted them. This is the judgment and this is just one step and hopefully the last step of your divorce but this is probably a good forty – fifty pages and this just represents the last step of the divorce.

There have been many, many things you would have had to do to get to this point. So, the client got this package and just basically threw it down to our desk and said “I can’t deal with this anymore, can you help us?”

The first thing I want to talk about is, if you’re doing your own divorce, it’s going to be very difficult. This is again a fifty page judgment and it’s the last phase, you would have had to gone through a lot of issue up to this point.

We always tell people to call our service so we can help them in advance but you’re going to get to a certain point and it’s going to be different for everyone. How far are you willing to go before you reach out for help? When that happens give us a call.

But, if you’re going to ignore me, which is fine and you’re going to submit your judgment on your own, there’s a certain way you need to do it.

We’re going to go through these steps on how to prepare. Because a lot of people just mail it in and think they’re done. So, I want to at least help those folks who perhaps have more time than money and don’t want to use our service to do it on their own.

First of all, you’re going to need four copies of everything. Every document that’s in here, you’re going to need four copies.

You have an original and four copies of everything. It’s just easier to you that way. Some are three, some are two but if you just made four copies of everything you’re going to be much better off.

When you submit your judgment, you’re going to need to have three sets of envelopes addressed from the court. Now, you are going to have to do this, addressed from the court to you and the other party. We have now three sets.

First of all, for the judgment itself you’re going to have to have two envelopes from the court and these are going to be the nine by twelve, like the large envelope so they can mail unfolded because the judge uses the thicker part.

You’re going to have to have two 9 x 12. I think that’s the right size. Envelopes to fit these legal forms in so that court can mail them back to you.

Again, addressed from the court to you and with the proper postage. You’re going to have to actually weigh the documents or put on an extra amount of postage to get it back to you.

The second set is going to be a regular envelope and you’re just going to need a single stamp, first class stamp and that’s going to be for the notice of entry of judgment. It’s a separate form, it’s a single page and that is also mailed to you separate from the judgment. That’s the second set.

The third set, let me see if I can remember here. If you have a default case and a default is a request to enter default. FL-165. If you’re submitting a default case you’re going to have this form and that also requires a separate envelope. Again, addressed from the court to you with postage already attached.

So, you’re going to have those sets of envelopes with all of your copies submitted to the court.

I hope that is helpful. I’m actually going to scan this and I’m going to put it in a slide share so I can make this available to those people who are looking to do this on their own, and then if you get stuck, call us. We’d love to help you out.

If you’re watching this video on YouTube, click the link below and I will send you right to the article that will have the slide share where you can go to these documents and see all the forms, you can probably even print them out.

Divorce661.com is our website. My name is Tim Blankenship. We’d love to help you with your divorce in California if you’re looking for professional service. 661-281-0266.

Anywhere in California we can help you with your divorce. Feel free to give me a call.

 

How To Complete California Divorce Income Withholding For Support FL-195

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How To Complete California Divorce Income Withholding For Support FL-195

Today we’re talking about how to fill out Income Withholding Order or Income Withholding for Support Order. This is form FL-195.

And I want to first want talk about a couple of reasons that you will want to use this and also down below in this article I’ve included a slide share with a template showing you exactly how to fill this out.

The reason I did this is if you are going to use an income withholding order, I haven’t found any other resource online that will help people fill this out. There’s some specific information to this three page form. There’s specific information that you need to fill out in the boxes.

And even if you read the instruction sheet, which there is one, it doesn’t tell you what needs to go in some of the boxes. It’s not very specific at all.

So, I want to do this little self-help video with a slide share, if you are preparing your own divorce or if you do need to submit an income withholding order, you can find this video and get some help in doing that.

Some reasons you’ll want to use an income withholding order, if you have an order for support, that could be child support or spousal support, you can use this income withholding order to submit to the employer of the person who is paying support so the support can be directly taken out of that party’s pay before they are paid.

So, you’ll get a check directly from the employer on the pay days. And this obviously has some benefits. You don’t have to worry about the other party writing your check or if there is a concern that the other party is not going to pay, it would be a good idea to do this.

Again, you can do this if you have a motion that you’ve recently filed for support and you want to get that on the income withholding order, you can do it then or you can do it as part of your divorce.

If there’s spousal support or child support ordered in your divorce, you can submit an income withholding order at that time.

For the purposes of this article, I want to go a little bit into the specifics on how you’re going to do this.

As far as filling out the form, you can look down below on this article or related article, if you’re watching this video on YouTube, go to my website divorce661.com and I’ll put the exact link, it will take you right to the page with this information.

But there are some specific things you want to do as far as filing it. Once you’ve prepared it and then taken down the information and put it on the form, you need to file it with the court.

You’re going to either take them down to court or mail them to court and you’re going to first ask for the judge to sign and make it an official order.

Once the judge signs it, then you need to serve it on the employer and if it’s a large corporation you’re going to want to find out where their payroll or administration office is and serve it there.

Now, when I say serve it, you’re going to do it by certified mail. You want to ensure that it’s received by the employer because they have a certain amount of days, I don’t have that in front of me now.

I’ll put it in the related article but they have a certain amount of days by when they have to actually start removing the support from the other party’s pay.

Take a look at the article, go ahead and look at the slid share for information on how to fill out the income withholding order.

Again, you need to first prepare it, get the judge to sign it, make it an official order and then serve it by certified mail on the employer and we’re going to do another video that talks about how to remove an income withholding order if you have one because you had a change in support or if you’re terminating support for perhaps the spousal support ending or child support order terminating.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

Please feel free to give me a call if you need help with your divorce. 661-281-0266.

We do help with divorce cases all throughout California.

California Divorce Judgment Checklist & Instructions

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

California Divorce Judgment Checklist & Instructions

Today we’re talking about the judgment checklist for dissolution for divorce in California.

I had a client come in recently and they’re trying to do their own divorce and they finally threw in the towel, which we find a lot – it’s not as simple as they make it sound.

But anyway they’ve gotten pretty far into the divorce. They had filed the divorce papers, done some of the financial disclosures; we had to clean up a lot of what they’ve previously done.

But they went in to have to enter their judgment, and prepare the judgment forms and the self-help center gave them a big fifty-page judgment package to complete and I’m going to discuss that in another video.

But today, in this article, we’re talking about the actual judgment checklist and what the court actually expects you to do.

So you can see that the judgment checklist is three pages long and if you notice closely, it just gives you the forms that you need to use.

It doesn’t give any instruction whatsoever on how to fill out the forms. And that is the biggest problem when trying to do your own divorce.

So you have here default without agreement, it gives you the forms that are needed which is great, so you can use this as a checklist to the forms you need, but then you have to get the forms, you’re going to have to fill them out. It doesn’t tell you how to file them, it doesn’t tell you how to fill them out, and it doesn’t tell you how to serve them.

And some of these forms are quite complicated.

Now we’ve done a self-help video on most of these. We’ll probably try and get to all of these at some point but there are so many forms when it comes to completing your divorce it’s really hard to become an expert on all those things, especially for you, if you’re trying to do this on your own.

So, just kind of want to give you that kind of heads up on what you’re looking at doing, this is again just the final step, this is not going to court multiple times filing, serving, doing the disclosures, the financial stuff and all that.

This is just the final step – three pages checklist – just to submit your paperwork and over fifty pages of judgment forms that you have to complete for your final step in your case.

We also recommend you use our professional service for your divorce such as us and this comes at different times for everybody.

It may be at the very beginning, you say: “Forget it, I don’t want to deal with this!” or it maybe halfway in the middle where it occurs a lot or at the end when people get thrown a stack of fifty pages to deal with to finish their divorce – they’ll call us then.

Whatever that time is, we’ll pick up where you left off and wrap up your divorce. We can help you anywhere in California.

So make sure to give us a call – 661-281-0266 or go to our website at divorce661.com. Thanks!

Default California Divorce Make Sure To Request What You Want In The Petition

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Default California Divorce Make Sure To Request What You Want In The Petition

If you watch our videos, you know we talk a lot about the default divorce process and quickly this is where you file for divorce and the other party doesn’t respond either unintentionally or on purpose and you’re going to complete a default style of case.

One thing to keep in mind is when you fill out your petition, now if you haven’t started the process or you’ve already started the process, this is form FL-100.

The petition basically lets your spouse know what your requests are, what you’re requesting in the divorce and also let the courts know what you’re requesting and I want to talk about why it’s important to place the correct request that you want on the petition, specifically in default style of cases.

On the petition, you’re going to state some statistical information, date of marriage, date of separation. You’re going to list the children’s information if you have kids. You’re going to list who and how child custody is going to be, whether it’s going to be full physical, full legal or joint and so forth.

Specifically regarding that, if you file the petition and let’s say you put joint physical and joint legal custody on the petition, you file it and you serve them, thirty days goes by and they don’t respond and now you’re going to file a default.

You can only ask for what you put in the petition and here’s the idea.

If the other party doesn’t want to contest in anything you requested like basically, I’m fine with what you’ve put on here so why do I need to respond, that’s their option.

So, when you go to file your divorce papers, your final agreement or your final judgment as a default. The only thing you can ask for is what you put in the petition. For example;

If you put joint, physical joint legal on the petition and then you go and file your default and you ask for full legal and full physical custody.

The courts are going to reject your judgment because you asked for more than or something different than what you put on the petition and essentially it wouldn’t be fair to the other party if you let him or her know, hey, I want to have a joint custody and then when they don’t respond, kind of a sneaky way go back and say I want full custody.

The courts won’t allow that because if he knew or she knew you want full custody perhaps they would have responded and said no, I don’t agree with that.

That’s the basis of how that works.

Number one, make sure you ask for what you want, even if you think, oh I think he’ll want joint. Put on the petition what you want, that way of there is a default. You can get what you want.

If you kind of go down the middle of the road and say well I think he’ll want this, I think he’ll want that and then there’s no response. You’re going to have to do exactly what you put on the petition. So make sure that is what you want.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

We can help you with your divorce anywhere in California. Make sure to check out our website, we have hundreds of videos, pod casts, tutorials, you can even find us on iTunes at divorce master radio. Give me a call, I’d be happy to give you a free consultation over the phone. 661-281-0266.

How And Why To Amend California Divorce Petition

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How And Why To Amend California Divorce Petition

Today we’re talking about what do you do if you need to change something on your petition.

And this is kind of a follow up to a video I literally just shot. When I turned off the camera I realized there’s more I wanted to say, so, I figured out just do another video.

Let’s assume that you fill out a petition, you file it, you serve it on your spouse and you want to change something.

Well, you have to fill a new petition, so an amended petition. Put on the changes that you are requesting and you have to re-serve it.

Again, it has to be done personally served again. And this can happen for a variety of reasons. I just had a case where the case was somewhat amicable.

We filed a petition for joint legal and joint physical custody and in moving forward things change between the parties and the party that filed decided they wanted a full legal and full physical custody as supposed to joint and the other party wasn’t responding they weren’t participating so the only thing you can do is amend your petition and that’s what we did.

So, here would be the steps.

Assuming you’ve already file your petition, it’s already been served. You have to file an amended petition and you have to re-serve it, personally serve it again.

And then you’re going to have to wait your thirty days again as well. That will set the new date. Every time you file a new petition and serve it. You have to give the other party thirty days to respond before you can move forward with your case.

Just keep that in mind if you do want to make changes and this is particularly is regarding default cases where there’s no agreement. The other party is not involved.

Because if you back to the other video I discussed, you can’t ask for anything other than what you asked for in the petition. So, if you want to change your mind you have to file a new petition and serve it so you can do that in your divorce.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

We have hundreds of videos, we’re on YouTube, we have enough podcast on iTunes at divorce master radio and call me direct, I’d be happy to give you free consultation. We can help you with your divorce anywhere in California. 664-281-0266.

How To Get Divorced In California When In The Military And Deployed Overseas

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How To Get Divorced In California When In The Military And Deployed Overseas

This article is for everyone on our arm forces. Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Army, you name it.

When going through divorce, people in military as you know go through divorce, probably at a higher rate than most due to deployment and what not.

But I want to let you guys know that we can help you even if you’re overseas, if you have residency in California.

We have helped many people in the Army, various related arm services who are deployed in Italy, in Germany, in Australia, and other places abroad who are deployed but their residency is in California and they want to get divorced and they’re not going to be back for several months or years and they don’t want to wait to come back to California to complete their divorce.

So, you do not have to physically be present in California, as long as your residency is California.

Like for me, I was in the Marine Corps, I was stationed in San Diego, I’ve lived in California my whole life but when I deployed, we’re talking many years ago, we’re talking desert storm, 1990 – 1991.

If I were married at that time and I want to get divorced. What would I do? Would I wait for years to come back or could I call a service like mine and have them complete the divorce for me.

And that is exactly what we’ve done for several people so far that are deployed overseas.

So, if you live in California, when you’re not deployed and that’s where you grew up and that’s where you have your residency. Maybe you have a California ID or driver’s license.

You can still file for divorce. We are full service so you don’t have to be here. We can do everything via email, over the phone and I know sometimes phone is challenging but we also have a chat feature to take care of that.

But we can schedule appointments. The last time we did, the gentlemen is deployed in Italy, that’s a nine hour time change so we just have to coordinate phone calls and things at that nature. But you can get through the divorce process.

We do everything for you, we’ll take it down to court, we’ll file it, we’ll serve it, we do all the forms, all the processes. You don’t have to worry about anything, you don’t need to even obviously leave the country and we can take care of the whole thing for you.

So, I just want to let people in the military know that we are here to do that for you if you needed to do that while you’re deployed.

Just give us a call. We’ll tell you over the phone exactly what we can do for you, what the process would be like, which we are looking at as far as getting it done and we’ll take care of business for you.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. Please feel free to visit our website.

Give me a call if you have any questions. 661-281-0266. We’ll be glad to help our arm forces personnel get through the divorce process while they’re deployed.

How We Help The Deaf During California Divorce

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How We Help The Deaf During California Divorce

Today we’re talking about our chat feature on our website.

If you’re on divorce661.com you may notice in the upper right hand corner there’s a little button there that says ‘Help’ or something along those lines.

We also have interactive chat feature that will pop up if we’re monitoring it and allow you to ask questions, things of that nature.

And one thing we didn’t know it would actually end up doing is help people that are deaf.

So we kind of want to bring this up, and let people know that – I know this is kind of intuitive this being on video talking about how we can help people that are deaf but it just so happens, we’re also going to write a blog about this too so hopefully they’ll find that.

So we have a person reach out to us via email and ask is if we are able to help them. They indicated that they were deaf. And they want to know if we could do it by TTY (telecommunication device for the deaf) or some type of service or via email.

And via email can be very difficult going back and forth just waiting for the email to come back when you’re trying to have an actual conversation. If it’s a replacement for conversation, I thought it would be probably very cumbersome.

I emailed back this gentleman and let him know to go on to our website, we would turn on the chat feature and we were able to have a chat directly through our website and basically completed this divorce by chat.

So I just want to bring that out there, that that is an option out there that we try and have a lot of technologically advanced systems on our website – there are blogs, there are videos, pod casts and our chat feature.

We just didn’t realize it was going to help people that are deaf or unable to communicate otherwise and I just thought it was a good thing to talk about and we’re actually starting promoting that.

So for those that cannot hear and are deaf and need to get through divorce. Those people are out there obviously.

Feel free to use our chat feature, send me an email, we can set up the chat and then we can have the conversation via chat.

To be honest with you, he was very pleased that we’re able to service him and actually have a conversation because by chat it goes very quickly as long as you can type quickly. But you can communicate your thoughts and you can respond to direct questions back and forth without having to have long drawn out email conversations that take a long time.

So there it is, I just wanted to talk about our ability to service people that are deaf and we can do that through our chat service

Of course, for other folks if you would like to chat, we can also do that for you as well. Divorce661.com is our website. 661-281-0266 is our phone number. Feel free to give us a call and we’d be happy to help you with your divorce in California.

Thanks!

California Divorce How Long Does The Divorce Process Take?

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California Divorce How Long Does The Divorce Process Take?

Today I want to answer the question I get most frequently every day, a hundred phone calls a day. How long does the divorce process take?

I swear that is the most frequently asked question and I’m trying to get this out on video so hopefully people come across this and they can find it online and on this video.

There are two answers to how long it takes.

You may or may not have heard of the six months. Its California’s cooling off period. People hear six months and oh, it takes six months to do the divorce. It takes six months to do the paperwork. That’s not true.

The six month rule is the soonest your divorce can be completed. It’s the soonest. Now let’s back up. Where does that time frame start? Not from when you file but from when your spouse is served. That day your spouse is served, six months and one is the soonest your divorce can be finalized.

You divorce could take a year, it could take two years. People come to me who have been trying to get this process over for four, five years.

The soonest your divorce can be finalized is six months and a day after your spouse is served.

Now, keep in mind that you don’t have to wait six months to finish all the paperwork. You can do all the paperwork immediately and if you’re going to do a default case or hybrid case, you can do everything within thirty days. You can even submit your judgement within thirty days, your agreement or whatever you want to call it.

You can submit that and you can get it in line to get reviewed.

Now, here’s one more time frame for you on answering this question how long it takes.

Let’s assume you get all your paperwork done and you submit your final agreement, all the signatures, all the agreements, everything.

From that point, depending on which court you’re at in California, it can be anywhere from six to eight months get your divorce paperwork, your judgment finalized and actually be done.

The idea here is get you paperwork done as quickly as possible. Get it submitted. You don’t have to wait until six months has passed to submit your agreement.

Get it in early. If they happen to get to your judgment sooner, then you’ll get your judgment back. It’ll be approved but it’ll just be on future date into the future.

We’ve had case where we’ve done in thirty days, we submitted it and got approved but the effective date of the divorce is four months from now or five months from now. It just depends on how fast they got to it.

So you can get it done and just get it over with, don’t wait, get your paperwork in.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. We’d love to help you with your divorce. We can help you anywhere in California. So, feel free to call us and we can save you money.

A lot of people think to use our service because we’re professional full service process that’s going to cost them more, in fact it will cost you less than you could do it on your own because we’re going to save you some court fees.

Again, anywhere in California. Go to our website at divorce661.com. We have hundreds of videos like this. If you’re looking for more information we have a podcast on iTunes, you can listen to us there at divorce master radio.

But feel free to call me, I’d be happy to discuss what we can do for you over the phone, how we can save you money and time and frustration on your divorce in California.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.