Los Angeles Divorce | Proper Order When Submitting Divorce Judgment Forms

Today we’re talking about how to prepare the divorce judgment in California and specifically this is going to be in regards to what order they need to go in.

We’re having, I’m seeing a lot of clients having trouble with filing their divorce judgment and half of it is doing the wrong forms and the wrong check boxes and all that, but the folks that get that part right are not getting the order correct and not collating the divorce judgment package correctly and not attaching the right forms to the documents that needed to be enclosed in the divorce.

I’m going to go over that and this is going to be about the order that you need to essentially staple your documents together.

If you’ve had your divorce case rejected and it says it wasn’t in the right order or it says the FL-180 was not the top form or you’re getting ready to submit your judgment. This is the video for you just to see if have this in the right order.

So, what I want you to do is take out your FL-180. The FL-180 on the second page is going to discuss several areas: children, parentage, child support, spousal support, property division and attorney’s fees and cost. This are items J through N on page two of the FL-180, the judgment form which is essentially the cover sheet for your judgment.

What you are going to do is, you are going to use that as your guide for the order you are going to submit your judgment.

Let’s assume you have all of these that apply to, you have child custody and visitation which is on line J, you have child support on K, you have spousal support on I, or I’m sorry in L, and property division on M. So, that’s going to be the order that you submit these.

Let’s talk specifically about the order.

Let’s say you have child custody. So, the first thing you are going to have in there is not on this form but it’s the FL-190. It’s regarding the children; it’s kind of a notice regarding responsibility for children. So, don’t forget that form.

The next thing you’ll have in there will be your child custody visitation attachment and that’s going to be the FL-341, that’ll be your first attachment, and behind that, you’re going to have your child support order, the FL-342, behind that, you’re going to have spousal support, that’s the FL-343. And then behind that you’ll have property division which is FL-345.

None of the other forms, well let me make it back up. So that’s what’s going to consist of your actual judgment package. So you have the judgment, you have all the attachments behind it and that’s going to be its own attachment, and you’re going to staple that together.

Everything else that’s part of the judgment package is going to be submitted individually. They are not going to be attached to this package with the judgment FL-180 on top.

If it’s a default case or a hybrid case, you’re going to have a request to enter default, you’re going to have a notice of entry judgment, you’re going to have a stipulation waiver, a final declaration of disclosure and you’re going to have the declaration for default and uncontested dissolution or legal separation.

All of these will be submitted with the package but individually, so, each of these will be stapled with three copies of everything behind them, this one, and all of these will be separate from the actual judgment package.

So, if you got it rejected it’s probably because you got of these all stapled together and the court didn’t want to take the time to unstapled it and put it in the correct order. So, just keep that in mind.

We’ll be talking a lot about the judgment packages, we’re seeing a lot of clients get this rejected. People that are doing this on their own. So, we’re going to try and cover all the items of rejection that are covered on the three page rejection sheet that the LA County Courts have.

And you’ll find that, even if you are anywhere in California that you’re going to find a lot of these rejections to be very similar wherever you are at in California.

I hope this was helpful, if you have any questions about submitting your judgment or your looking for a service to help you prepare your judgment or any part of your divorce case please give me a call.

My name is Tim Blankenship. You can reach me direct at 661-281-0266.

And of course you can always get more information off our website at divorce661.com.