Los Angeles Divorce | You Must Pay Filing Fee For Response
Today I had an interesting call I wanted to share with you.
A call from a client or a potential client rather that had a misunderstanding on the filing fees when you file a response.
If you file for divorce, you’re going to file summons and petitions. You’re going to pay a filing fee. If the other party’s going to file a response, they also have to pay a fee.
This is common knowledge but I figured if one person had this been misunderstanding, others do and I have heard of occurrences where people have mailed in responses to the court and assumed it was filed, and there was no fee attached. So, the court just throws in the trash literally, they don’t know what to do with it.
When your spouse files for divorce, they have not paid for the entire divorce, they have paid their half of the filing fee. If you’re going to file a response, you’re also going to have to pay that $435 for instance, to file a response.
Just make sure if you are going to respond, you either need to pay the fee or you need to request the fee waiver and there’s a very strict guidelines in qualifying for fee waivers. But there is a fee to file a response and participate in the case. I think this person, the word he said “well my wife already paid for the divorce” and that’s not the case. She paid for her filing only and not for the response.
Now, we do have a method that’s called a hybrid dissolution, what that means is you purposely will not file a response but you can still enter the case by doing your financial disclosures and signing a written agreement.
This is what we do 90% of the time because it saves you guys $435 or at least the other party $435. And if you guys are doing this together you can simply split the initial filing fee.
It’s called a hybrid dissolution, its where one party files, the other party doesn’t respond, the case is going to proceed by default but it’s going to be default with agreement.
If you want more information on this particular type of judgment, it’s a divorce like any other. You get the same result it just saves you money.
Stay on my YouTube channel and search for hybrid dissolution judgment or hybrid divorce judgment checklist. I’ve done a couple of videos on it.
Go ahead and take a look at that and it goes over the checklist and why you can save $435.
File a response, pay a fee or fee waiver. Do a hybrid and don’t worry about having to pay a fee and you can still enter into a stipulated judgment with your spouse without paying the fee.
My name is Tim Blankenship. divorce661.com is our website.
Give me a call. 661-281-0266.
We specialize in California divorce. Look forward to working with you.