Signing Divorce Papers Does Not Mean You Agree | California Divorce

Hi, this is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

And today I wanted to clear up some misunderstanding as it relates to when you are served divorce documents by mail.

So, we specialize in divorce in LA County and a lot of our cases are amicable. And in amicable divorce cases what we like to do as instead of having the original or initial documents served by a process server, we like to mail them out to your spouse.

So they can simply sign the form which is called the notice of acknowledgement of receipt. All they have to do is sign this form that says that they received the papers and mail it back to our office.

That will take the place of hiring a process server and saves us some time and money.

Now, what happens sometimes is when people receive the papers like the summons, the petition, and anything else that might be included in the initial documents, is they’ll read the documents and if there’s something that they don’t agree with, they’ll tell the other party that they’re not going to sign the papers.

And that doesn’t make any sense.

When you receive papers from say, our office, and we’ve sent them to you along with this notice of acknowledgement of receipt. All we’re asking is, that you sign this form which says that you received the documents.

It in no way means that you agree with anything inside the petition.

So in this current case, the spouse had an issue with the custody arrangement that his wife was asking for, and because of that, he let her know that he wasn’t going to sign this notice of acknowledgement of receipt because he didn’t agree.

That’s not the proper way to do that, all he needs to do is sign the notice of acknowledgement of receipt and mail it back to our office.

This simply lets the court know he was served, that he received their paper. It in no way means he agrees with anything in those papers, so what’s going to happen is instead of him just signing this form now we have to hire a process server to go out there and hand him the forms.

Now because a process server served him, does that mean that he agrees with what’s in the papers? Of course not. So it’s the same thing.

So, if you want to disagree with something that you’ve been served with, that’s when you file a response. That’s what the response is for.

So just wanted to make this quick video to let people know if you received papers from our office or from anyone else if you’re in a self-representative divorce case, and your spouse mails you this notice of acknowledgement of receipt along with the papers. Signing that only means you received the papers so you don’t have to hire a process server, hope that helps.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com we specialize in divorce in Los Angeles County. Please give me a call if you have any questions or need assistance with your divorce case 661-281-0266.

Thanks and have a great day!