Filed For Divorce But Now Reconciling | What To Do | California Divorce

Today, I wanted to talk to you about your options if you filed for divorce and then later you want to reconcile your divorce or you want to take a little extra time to work things out and see if maybe you filed for divorce a little too soon.

So, I had two clients, probably in the last month, where this has happened to.

The first one you know had a rough week and came in filed for divorce, we filed the paperwork, and then essentially they wanted to hold off and see if things would work out.

So they spent a couple of weeks, maybe a month, waiting to serve their paperwork before doing so just to give it some time, and that’s certainly one option.

Once the paperwork has been filed, you can just hold it, you don’t have to serve it right away.

Just know, that if you’re in Los Angeles County, what the courts have started doing is if you have not served the paperwork within about sixty days they will set a hearing and have you come into court to explain what’s going on.

Now here is the problem with that, if you filed for divorce and didn’t serve your spouse, and then they mail something to your house from the courts saying, you haven’t served your divorce paperwork yet.

You can see how that could be a problem, your spouse getting something like that in the mail, unknowingly to you, that they got the mail and find out from the court that you had filed for divorce.

So you have to watch out for that.

The second option, and this really depends, is to just not serve the paperwork right away but have them sign a notice of acknowledgement of receipt.

What you can do is, and this is what happened in the second case. We filed for divorce, I mailed the paperwork out to a spouse, and then they said “You know what? We want to kind of hold off and see if we can work things out.” –which is great.

Of course that’s why there’s that six-month cooling off period, the courts want you to take that time to possibly reconcile your divorce or your marriage rather.

So what I advise this family is for them to not fill out any of the paperwork just hold on to it and you know you can always serve it later.

The other option is to just back-date the day the paperwork was received and just not sign it yet.

So what that means, is they can use the notes of acknowledgement receipt, sign it and date it for the day it is received so it’s back dated to that six-month date.

And they can hold it and if the court sets a hearing.

Then all they have to do is file that notice of acknowledgement and receipt with the proof of service and they won’t have to go to court for that case management conference; or they can go to the hearing and simply ask for the case to be dismissed if they’re going to continue on with their marriage.

Just keep in mind if you do dismiss the case and the divorce and you need to later re-file, you’re going to have to repay the filing fee.

So if you’re not a hundred percent sure, go ahead and have the person served, and then just wait.

There’s not going to be a rush to complete any paperwork after that point in most cases, and then later, six months, eight months down the road you can always dismiss the case then.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to give me a call.

My name is Tim Blankenship with divorce661.com.

You can reach me direct at 661-281-0266.

Thanks!