How To File For Divorce In Palmdale | Lancaster California

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How To File For Divorce In Palmdale | Lancaster California

In this video we want to talk to you about the couple of ways you have to file your divorce in Palmdale and Lancaster.

Number one, if you have more time than money, the Lancaster court, the Michael Antonovich Court House in Lancaster does have a self-help clinic.

If you have more time than money, meaning you’re unemployed and you don’t have funds available to hire a service like ours to prepare your divorce. You can always go to the self-help clinic at the Lancaster court house.

And just too so you’ve been made aware, the free service is worth every penny.

What I mean by that is, it is free, you’re going to spend a lot of time there. It’s going to take you at least twenty trips before you finish your divorce and most people do not succeed with them so you have to be very patient. They’re not the nicest folks up there from what I hear.

But I do want to let you know that if you are unemployed and you don’t have funds or resources to hire a professional service and that’s really your choice. It is there and available for you.

Number two, to file your divorce in Palmdale and Lancaster is you could do it yourself. You do not need to hire an attorney. You could go online, you can get the forms. You can attempt to do it your own. You could watch more than 200 of our videos on how to prepare your own divorce.

It is possible. I had people call me and say thanks Tim, I’ve prepared my entire divorce using your videos. But again, like the self-help center, very time consuming. You’re going to spend a lot of hours of your own time doing this on your own.

The third way, and of course we prefer you do it this way is to hire a professional service such as ours. Our cost are very low, are affordable. We work on flat fee basis. And if you’re not working and you do have a little extra money lying around. We can even prepare a fee waiver for you and get your court fees waived.

What we’ll do for you is, we will take everything out of your hands. We will prepare all the forms, file with the court, we’ll actually take them up there for you. You don’t have to go to court at all.

We’ll serve them on your spouse. We’ll do all the financial disclosures and then we’ll prepare your judgment as you dictate, meaning what you want as far as assets and debts, who’s getting what, child support, parenting plan, custody, visitation, the whole shot.

We’ll it take at your hands. Do everything for you for a flat fee. You can go to divorce661.com and go to our pricing page. You can see where you fit in and again, we’ll take care of the fee waiver at no extra cost.

If you’re looking for a service, so you need help anywhere in the process. Meaning, you started your divorce and you got stuck, because honestly it’s just getting trickier as you go.

Please give me a call. 661-281-0266.

We serve all of the Los Angeles County and again, you can get more information off our website at divorce661.com.

I’ll include that link in this video. Talk to you soon and I hope this video was helpful.

How To File California Divorce Request To Enter Default

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

How To File California Divorce Request To Enter Default

Today we are talking to you about the request to enter default form.

This is form FL-165. There’s been a lot of confusion on when and how to file it so we’re going to discuss that here.

We play this video and is also embedded into our blogs, so if you’re reading this on our blog you can watch the video and you can also follow up on reading the article that we have in this video embedded in.

The request to enter default. We should talk a little bit about what this is for.

When you file for divorce and the other party is served, that date that your spouse is served marks kind of a line in the sand as far as the jurisdiction on when your case starts. If your, today is November 4th 2013, so if your spouse is served today. Two things.

Number one is your divorced can’t be finalized for six months. That day the six month mark starts the day your spouse is served.

The other thing that starts on the day your spouse is served is the date which you can file the request to enter default.

Now, a default will be filed in two particular cases.

Number one, a true default case and also what’s called a hybrid or default with agreement.

Now, we’re going to like talk about the true default today because that’s really where the thirty day period comes in. Let’s get into this a bit.

The request to enter default form cannot be filed with the court until thirty days have passed from the day your spouse has been served. In fact, it cannot even be one day before that. So, I’d even say wait for thirty one days, wait thirty two days before you submit it and here’s the trick.

Do not date the form prior to that thirty day mark. It’s not when you submit it, it’s when you date the form.

Let me give you a scenario.

We had some clients who came to us for a service after they attempted to do their own divorce and they had tried to submit the request to enter default.

What they did was, they prepared the summons and petitions and a lot of the forms all in the same day. They filed the case, they got their spouse served but the date they put on the request to enter default was the same date that they filed the divorce paperwork. Obviously, not thirty days had elapsed.

It means you cannot prepare this form in advance, if you want to just don’t date it. The courts are now looking at the dates on your request to enter default. So, what I’m saying is even if you have submitted your request to enter default thirty days after the service where everything is good to go and you get it right, if you dated it sooner than thirty days, they will reject it just because the date on your form.

And the reason this is, is because a request to enter default has to get approved by the judicial assistant or the court clerk and it doesn’t get to them right away. So, when they get it, they don’t know when they received that form. All they do is look at the date on the request to enter default and if that date is under thirty days they’re going to reject it. So, just keep that in mind.

Real quick, I know I’ve said this when we’re talking about true default but we did this video pretty quick.

When you do the other style case, where you’re going to use a request to enter default that’s on a hybrid or that default with agreement. You’re not going to have to submit the request to enter default at that thirty day mark.

You’re going to submit the request to enter default with your judgment.

Hope that makes sense, my name is Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. My number is 661-281-0266. Give us a call if you’d like to hire us to complete your divorce for you.

And the link below in the video if you’re not already on our blog page. Talk to you soon!

California Divorce | We Work With Both Spouses During Divorce

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California Divorce | We Work With Both Spouses During Divorce

Today we are talking to you about how we are able to work with both spouses during the divorce process.

We are what’s called a neutral third party. We do not represent either side when you use our divorce service.

It doesn’t matter if you hire us or your spouse hires us, we can and often do work with both spouses. And the reason we’re able to do that is because we are not a law firm and we’re not attorneys. We are here simply to facilitate the divorce process in any way we can.

And if that means working with both spouses to get all the paperwork completed as required to complete your divorce. We’re willing to do that and we do that for the same price.

We don’t charge a double fee if we’re working with both spouses. We treat it as a single fee working with both parties to facilitate getting the process done.

You have a couple of options when it comes to doing that.

Some folks come in to our office together, both husband and wife come in and meet with us on the first occasion and we get to know each other and we complete the initial documents and we can get started that way.

But that’s not required. We only need the party filing for divorce to come in for the initial appointment to get the ball rolling, to complete the initial paperwork.

And then moving forward, it’s up to you if you want your spouse to come in later to meet with us or if you want to be the one that we kind of coordinate everything through.

Again, it really just comes down to what works best for you. Again, anyway we can facilitate the process in coordinating and moving things forward with you is what we’re here for.

If that means working with each of you independently, working with you together or working through one of you who will facilitate the process and moving things forward. And we have a pretty good idea of which way that’s going to go once we meet with you the first time.

We want to get this video message out there because when parties do hire us from the get go, sometimes they think that we’re here just to represent them, which isn’t the case. We don’t represent either side. We are a neutral third party. We’re here to facilitate the process and get the paperwork done and just get you guys divorced so you can move on with your lives.

My name is Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com is our website.

Feel free to give me a call, 661-281-0266. We can handle divorce cases anywhere in California and we look forward to working with you.

Santa Clarita Divorce Mediation

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Santa Clarita Divorce Mediation

Today I wanted to talk to you about mediation and what it is and how it applies to divorce cases.

But first I want to give you a couple of facts.

More than 90% of divorce cases are going through the divorce system without ever having an attorney or needing any type of mediation services at all.

Our company can prepare your divorce case from start to finish. We generally will help people with amicable divorces or uncontested cases, anywhere where the parties are talking and working through their divorce on their own and don’t feel the need of hiring an attorney. They don’t have any legal issues, they don’t need legal advice and they probably will not end up in court.

And statistics tell us that only 10% of cases actually end up in court and actually need an attorney.

Generally speaking, we can handle 90% of the divorce cases here in Santa Clarita.

Now, as far as mediation services go, sometimes that is a necessity. Where the parties don’t agree, where you can’t come to an agreement. Where you have difficulty coming to an agreement. Mediation services are something you might want to take a look at utilizing.

We have client that start with us and think everything is fine and then they hit a little road bump and it’s usually about money.

So, we are talking about the issues with the kids and child support or with the other spouse and spousal support or something along those lines.

If you have trouble coming to an agreement going through your divorce and you’re using our service or if you’re not using our service. You may want to attempt using mediation prior to going out and hiring attorneys.

As obvious cost benefit here, when you use a mediation service it’s going to be a neutral third party. A party who’s going to sit down with both of you. They’ll never meet alone with you and they’ll discuss with you the issues, help you work through the process and come ultimately to an agreement. That’s the goal of mediation.

We refer out cases that end up needing mediation, where parties get stuck. Where they thought that everything is going to be fine and get stuck. We refer them out to mediation. They’ll mediate and they’ll come back.

Now, there are two types of mediation.

You have professional paid mediation and you have the court mediators.

If you go to a paid mediation, I generally recommend that because these are people you’re paying for. They’re going to spend the time it takes, quality time in helping you get through the issues in your divorce.

Mediation through the court is usually an hour. They don’t spend a lot of time with you. They’re hoping you’ll come to an agreement but they’re not going to work with you to come to an agreement.

We’re talking about paid mediation services, if you need a referral for a mediation service here in Santa Clarita. Feel free to give me a call.

We have a great service that we’d be happy to refer you to. We’ve send out several cases, happy clients have comeback and got their settlements in place and then we’ll wrap their divorce case for them.

Please call me if you think you may need mediation. But keep in mind that there’s a very small chance that you’ll need an attorney or mediation to get your divorce completed.

Please feel free to give us a call. I’d be happy to talk more about our service and how we can help you get through your divorce without attorneys, without mediation and make everything cost efficient for you.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com. You can call me at 661-281-0266 or you can click the link below to visit our website at divorce661.com.

How To Prepare California Divorce Papers (With Kids) *First Steps*

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How To Prepare California Divorce Papers (With Kids) *First Steps*

Today we are talking about how to prepare your California divorce when you have kids and this is specifically the first step.

This is the paperwork you’ll need to file in order to get the documents stamp by the court so you can get your spouse served. This will handle the first step of filing your California divorce when you have kids.

This is going to include the summons, the petition, the case cover sheet or nose of assignment if you have those forms for your court. It’s a little bit different each county.

Give us a call if you have any questions on that. And when you have kids, you have to fill another form called a UCCJEA.

Now, the great thing about this video is we’re going to put a link in the bottom where you can get the self-help forms off of a slide share that we created that has the instructions.

We are a full service divorce document preparation firm in California. We’d love to prepare your forms for you and walk you through the process and do all the work for you.

However, we know that there are clients out there that don’t have the money to hire us. They have more time than money perhaps and they want to attempt to do this on their own, so we are providing these documents online with arrows and directions and instructions on exactly how to fill out the forms.

For those of you, who want to use our service please give us a call at 661-281-0266 or click the link below. They’ll take you directly to our website for more information on pricing and so forth.

But, I wanted to get this information out there for folks who are having trouble getting information offline or online or with your local court. A lot of times it’s hard to find out the forms you need and the steps and even if you get the forms it’s basically comes down to how do you fill them out.

So, these forms are pretty helpful, they are right from the self-help clinics for Los Angeles County. I’ve gone over them, they are pretty thorough.

Again, we provide this as a full service. We’d be happy to take care of all these for you but for those folks who are going to do that on their own or at least attempt this first phase of things. Please use these forms, they are very helpful.

You can click over to the slide share. I’m going to put a link directly to the slide share below so you can find our blog below, divorce661.com.

Also, I have the link to the slide share with instructions on how to fill out the forms.

I hope that’s helpful. Please call us if you like to use our full service process. We do serve all of California. Our number here is 661-281-0266.

Why You Don’t Want To Use LegalZoom For Your Santa Clarita Divorce

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Why You Don’t Want To Use LegalZoom For Your Santa Clarita Divorce

Today I’m talking to you about the pros and cons of using LegalZoom for your Santa Clarita divorce.

I just stepped into the office and return the phone call I received over the weekend for the client in Santa Clarita saying they have a simple divorce, no cases, no property and by the time I returned their call, he mentioned he had already used another service.

I asked him who you end up using, and he said that he is using LegalZoom.

And there’s really a lot of cons, I should say. Negatives to using LegalZoom and I want to talk to you about that a little bit.

The first thing is, you have to do everything yourself. They’re going to give you a form, questionnaire that you pay for. I think its $299. And you’re going to have to fill out all the questions on this questionnaire online.

Then what happens is they’ll print out the documents for you and basically what it does is it’ll take the information you plug into the questionnaire and place it into the forms.

The bad part about that is nobody is going to review your documentation. It’s all computerized.

I had a client that used LegalZoom and they filled out the forms incorrectly, printed them, they were delivered to their home, couple of days or weeks later. And they received some of the forms blank, some of the forms are wrong.

But it’s all because the information they plug in there was incorrect or in the wrong spots so you have to be careful for that.

Probably, the worst thing about using any of these types of services, LegalZoom or any of these document assembly services is that you have to do all the leg work and you’re going to have twice the fees so let’s talk about that.

When you use these types of services, you’re going to have to do the leg work.

You’re going to have to go down the court. You’re going to have to follow the procedures of court. You’re going to file your form, serve your forms, file all the documentations. Do all your financial disclosures and do the same for your spouse as well.

Where people get hung up is on the procedure. Filing of the forms is done correctly but the procedure can be done wrong and this includes the judgment which is your final agreement which can be very difficult to complete.

When that happens, you want to make sure you’re using a service, someone you can call like us. Who can take care of that.

The leg work is all going to be on you.

Now, another issue with these document assembly service like this is that you’re going to have to pay twice the amount of fees. When you file for a divorce in California, when you file you have to pay a filing fee and when your spouse files a response, she has to pay a filing fee.

When you use these online service providers, their directions require you to file the fees twice. You have a response fee and you’re going to have a fee for the petition.

Now, you’re going to have to pay, that’s almost $900 in fees for court services because LegalZoom can’t tell you that there is a process in LA County where you can get away with only one filing fee.

So, it’s going to be twice as expensive from the court fee perspective.

You’re going to do all the leg work and at the end of the day when you use our service, even though we have a higher cost for doing it. You are going to be out the door a lot less money than you would be using these online service providers.

Now, quickly what we do is we’ll prepare, file and serve all your documents. We go down the court. We do all the leg work. And you only have to pay one filing fee.

When you use our service, and because you only have one filing fee, our higher costs are absorbed by that lack of not having to pay that filing fee.

Therefore, the costs are the same or less when you use our service as supposed to one of these online services and we’re doing all the work for you.

I just wanted to get that across to you, if you’re in Santa Clarita thinking of using one of these online services, please give us a call. We’d be happy to go down and show you how our pricing are less and how we can do all the work for you.

Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

Give me a call. 661-281-0266 or visit our website at divorce661.com for more information.

How To File A California Divorce Stipulation For Spousal Support

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How To File A California Divorce Stipulation For Spousal Support

Today we are talking to you about how to file a California stipulation for spousal support.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that when going through divorce in California, you can stipulate to certain things that you agree to without having to go to court, without having to go to the mediator.

You can do these things on your own by drafting stipulation as to the terms of the agreement and you can both sign it, it can submitted to court and the court will sign it, the judge will sign it. And once that happens, it will be a court order.

It’s an easier way to do things than going to court. And then my line of work of specializing in California divorce and working with people that are going to the divorce process in California, on their own, representing themselves, often times they’ll need help with these sort of thing.

And they think they have to go to court, they think they have to get an attorney, all kinds of different things that are going to their heads when in reality, all you need to do is file a stipulation.

Now, the title of this video is how to file a stipulation for spousal support. But this really pertains to anything.

If you need help with something like this, feel free to give me a call. We have a paid service. We’d be happy to prepare your stipulation for you for whatever it is that you guys are agreeing on and you want to have it made as an order.

I’ve also embedded in this video, what I’ll do is I’ll put a link into this video to a slide share that I’ve created. My slide share account that you’ll be able to get the language.

What I’ve done is I’ve taken one that we’ve submitted to court here in California, in Los Angeles County. It was approved by a judge, all the language is legally sufficient, and I gave you three different scenarios: one for spousal support, one for child support, and a way of asking for something else.

In this case it was asking for one of the parties to pay half of the cost of the tuition for their children.

You can use the language. You can go ahead and copy the language if you wanted to. I can create this stipulation for you if you need assistance.

But again, look below this video and I will have the link to the slide share. I’ll also have a link to the blog post that I wrote at divorce661.com and you guys can read about the stipulations and what they can be used for, how you can create them.

And then again, the slide share is there so you can get the language right off the stipulation if you wanted just to write it on your own.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com. We specialize in California divorce.

We’re here to help you, if you need assistance please give me a call. 661-281-0266. You’ll always get more information off our website at divorce661.com.

California Divorce | When You Need To Notarize Your Divorce

Posted by Tim Blankenship on

California Divorce | When You Need To Notarize Your Divorce

Today I want to talk to you about when you need a notary, when you need to notarize your divorce paperwork in California.

We specialize in divorce. We are a legal document preparation service in California. We are actually in Santa Clarita, which is in northern Los Angeles County. We specialize in divorce in California.

I want to talk to you about when you need to notarize your divorce documents. There appears to be a lot of confusion on this issue.

First we need to talk about the different types of divorce cases. So you’d understand what case you have, what style of divorce you have as you all know if this applies to you or not.

First off, we have what’s called a true default case.

A true default case is one where you file, your spouse does not file a response, they don’t participate, they don’t sign anything, they don’t cooperate, they are not involved at all. That’s what is called a true default case and you do not need to notarize your signature.

The court knows you file for divorce, they noted that’s who you are and when you submit your judgment you do not need to notarize your documents.

The next style of divorce is what’s called a uncontested divorce. This is where you have filed for a divorce, your spouse has responded and you’re going to enter into an agreement or go to court or something along those lines.

Those types of cases when you enter your judgment, again, you do not need to have your signature notarized, either one of you.

The third style is what we call a hybrid. It’s also referred to as a default with agreement. This is the case where you’re going to file for divorce, your spouse is not going to respond officially and they’re going to enter into a written agreement with you.

You’re going to sign, you’re going to give out disclosures, you’re going to enter into a written agreement, sign the judgment.

On this particular style of case, you will need to have the respondents signature on the judgment only notarized prior to submitting it to the court.

The reason for this is, because the respondent never actually filed a response. The court wants to make sure it is actually them involved in the case and not some other third party.

If you want more information on these different types of cases, they all end in divorce. It really just depends on if your spouse has responded, not responded, or if you are entering into a written agreement. They all end up with divorce. It’s just the type of paperwork that required for each of those different types.

We generally will use the default with agreement or hybrid case. This allows you to enter into a written agreement with your spouse without having to file a response and the benefit to that is you save money by not having to pay that filing fee.

If you want more information on that, stay on this channel and search for true default divorce in California or true default vs. hybrid and we’ve done a video on that as well and get more information about the benefits of that.

If you need assistance with your divorce, we can either begin and start to finish your case so we can pick up where you got stuck and left off. Let us know, that’s what we specialize in.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

For more information you can to the website or feel free to give me a call at 661-281-0266.

How To Fill Out California Divorce Motion Forms (RFO) Santa Clarita Divorce

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How To Fill Out California Divorce Motion Forms (RFO) Santa Clarita Divorce

Today we’re talking about how to file a divorce motion.

And this is generally for California but specifically for Los Angeles County. It may slightly very outside of the county of Los Angeles. So double check the court website or feel free to give us a call.

But we are talking about filling out a motion. This was called an order to show cost in the past it’s now called a request for order.

And this is form FL-300. This is a document that you’ll use or form rather that you’ll use to ask the court for some type of temporary order.

This could be for spousal support, child support, custody, visitation, basically anything you want to ask the court for to get an order form the court, you would file this type of motion.

Certain things to keep in mind, you have some time frame as far as services are concerned. I’ve done a video on that as well.

But today we’re specifically talking about the documents you need. You’re going to need form FL-300, that’s the form you’d file with the court to get a hearing.

If you’re request have anything to do with custody, visitation or children for that matter, you’re going to also need a mediation date, which you’re going to obtain from the court mediation office prior to filing your motion and getting your court date.

They will not give you a court date for your motion until you’d have that mediation date and time schedule.

The next thing you’ll need to do is an income expense declaration if your request has anything to do with money.

If it has anything to do with child support or spousal support or any financial purposes, you’re going to need to file an income expense. This is form FL-150.

Other things you’ll have to do, if you have motion regarding your children is take an online PACT class.

That is P A C T. Parents And Children Together, I believe.

And you can do that right online, it takes about an hour and you’ll need to do that before your mediation date.

Those are the forms you’d need. When you go to file before you serve your motion on your spouse, you need to get the court date and the mediation date if applicable before you serve your spouse.

You need to have the court date on there before you server your spouse.

We’ve been doing a lot of motions and I want to just get this video out there. We can help you, if you need to file a motion for any reason. We can help you get the court date, the mediation date, we can schedule your only PACT class. We can help you with all of that.

Just keep in mind that if it’s regarding spousal support or child support, you need an incoming expense, don’t forget that. You’ll also need to serve blank copies of exactly what you’re serving.

We can take care of this for you, if you need to file a motion, just keep in mind that any motion you file with the court is a temporary order until final judgment.

Just because you get a spousal support order or child support order in that hearing, you still need to incorporate that into the final order. Don’t make a mistake of thinking your case is finalized because you have an order from the court.

Any request for order motion is a temporary order until final judgment is entered in your case.

My name is Tim Blankenship, divorce661.com.

The number is 661-281-0266. Look forward to talking to you.

Two Reasons For Filing Legal Separation vs. Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce

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Two Reasons For Filing Legal Separation vs. Divorce | Santa Clarita DivorceTwo Reasons For Filing Legal Separation vs. Divorce | Santa Clarita Divorce

Today we’re talking about the legal separation process a bit.

I’ve been getting a lot of calls about legal separation, so we’re doing a couple of videos about legal separation specifically.

I usually talk people out of filing for legal separation because I believe there’s only real two reasons you should be filing for legal separation.

One is religion and two is for medical concerns, if you do a legal separation, your spouse can remain on a health insurance in most cases.

I’ll tell you, those two reasons, there isn’t really a compelling reason why you should file for a legal separation as supposed to divorce unless you have some other personal reasons for doing so.

For instance, in another video, we spoke about the fact that filing for legal separation is no faster than filing for divorce because the courts are so busy.

I just wanted to cover that quickly, we do handle legal separation cases. If need more information on legal separation cases feel free to give me a call.

The legal separation process is exactly the same way as a divorce process is. In fact, it’s all the same paperwork and you’ll fill out all the same forms.

The only difference is you check the legal separation box as supposed to the dissolution box and the process is identical.

We can certainly help you if you want to go through a legal separation, we can also obviously help you with your divorce case but feel free to give us a call.

My name is Tim Blankenship. 661-281-0266 or divorce661.com for more information.