This explanation, or statement, is called a declaration. Your declaration needs to describe the facts of your situation and give the judge the important information needed to give you orders. You want to be honest, easy to understand, and tell the judge exactly what you want. Once you file your motion with the court, you are given a date and time for your hearing. Make sure you have your calendar available when the clerk is scheduling your hearing date in order to avoid conflicts. Like all documents you file with the court, the clerk keeps the original, double hole punched document and stamps the two copies you provided.
The clerk returns the endorsed-filed copies back to you. One copy is for your records, and the other copy is for you to serve on the other spouse. It is up to you to ensure that your spouse is served on time. The purpose of CCRC is provide a neutral environment for parents to work out their parenting disputes with the assistance of a mental health professional, called a Child Custody Recommending Counselor.
Unless there is domestic violence, parents participate together in the same room with the counselor. The goal of the recommending counselor is to facilitate an agreement between the parents and allow them the first opportunity to make decisions about their own children.
There is no set time limit on these sessions. In some counties, CCRC can be as short as 15 minutes. Other counties allot three or more hours. The amount of time given to the parents typically depends on whether mediation is conducted the day of the hearing, or at a separate appointment prior to the hearing.
If you are filing for temporary orders along with the petition, you will need to arrange to have a third party adult personally serve your spouse. For more information on service, see Step 1, Filing for Divorce. Unless given special permission by the judge, you are required by law to serve your request at least 16 court days before the hearing. If the motion is served by mail, you must add an additional 5 calendar days to your deadline. Court days do not include weekends or any of the 13 state holidays, which are as follows:.
There is little strategic value in delaying to serve your spouse with your motion. The more advance notice that can be given to the other side, the greater the opportunity is to reach agreements before the hearing date. If you miss your deadline to serve, you will have to file additional paperwork and obtain a new court date. If you and your spouse reach an agreement, you may be able to avoid going to court if you are able to write up your agreement into a formal court order.
The formal name for an agreement is a stipulation. A stipulation can become an order when the judge signs and approves of your agreement.
This is usually called a Stipulation and Order. As part of your agreement, you can drop vacate the hearing. Reaching an agreement and turning it into a court order is usually the best of both worlds. Not only do you remain in control of your situation and make your own decisions, but you also have the benefit of an enforceable court order.
You have the opportunity to tell the judge your side of the story by filing paperwork with the court before your hearing date. Your job is to respond only to the issues addressed in the Request for Orders. For example, if your spouse requests child custody and visitation orders, you need to tell the judge if you agree or disagree with the requested orders. If you disagree, you should state what you would like the judge to order. A Responsive Declaration is not the right paperwork for asking the judge for orders that are not part of the Request for Orders.
Therefore, if your spouse asks for custody and visitation orders, you should not be responding by asking the judge for spousal support. The deadline to file a Responsive Declaration is usually 9 court days before your hearing date, unless the Request for Order states otherwise. Court days do not include weekends or any of the 13 state holidays. For a list of court holidays, please see above.
It is very important that you file your response in a timely manner. There are many reasons why you may not be ready for a hearing. Some of these typical reasons are as follows:. Moving the hearing date is commonly referred to as a continuance. You can always ask the other side to agree to a continuance. If the other side does not consent to continuing the hearing date, you can always ask the judge.
Assuming you have a very good reason for not being prepared for your hearing, judges are often willing to give you a new court date. An emergency Request for Orders is called an Ex Parte. When an Ex Parte is filed, the judge is being asked to issue temporary emergency orders in a very short window of time.
In order to make Ex Parte orders, the judge has to be convinced that there is a true emergency. An emergency is defined on a case by case basis, but in general, most judges find the following to be emergencies that would warrant the filing of an Ex Parte. Ex Partes require a great deal of detail and adherence to strict procedural requirements. There are a lot of very specific state rules, local county rules, and statutory requirements that must be followed for an Ex Parte to be granted.
Your judge will make orders regarding the issues listed in the Request for Order. You should be prepared to provide the judge with additional information as requested. Based on the documents filed with the court and what each of you says at the hearing, your judge will make oral orders.
These orders need to be formally memorialized in writing with a form called a Findings and Order After Hearing.
Depending on the issues, you may need to complete a number of other forms. It is very important that the orders be written up accurately and filed with the Court. Your Findings and Order After Hearing will provide both you and your spouse with clarity on what the judge ordered. You are required to obey what the judge ordered, and failure to do so may result in fines, community service, or even jail time.
Let us help alleviate some confusion and concern regarding spousal support. Start with our spousal support calculator to provide some clarity on what potentially lies ahead. Calculate Spousal Support. It is a specific way of listing out all assets, debts, income, and expenses. In addition, you will state who owns or owes each asset or debt, when the property or debt was acquired, and provide a rough value of each item.
As part of the divorce process, you will be dividing property, including debts, as well as determining support. Financial disclosures can be very tricky and tedious to complete. You are required to provide a substantial amount of documentation, including but not limited to the following:.
All of these documents need to be formatted in a very specific way. You will then need to serve all of your financial disclosures on the other side; however, you will only file FL and FL with the court. There are two sets of financial disclosures required during the divorce process. The first disclosure is called the preliminary declaration of disclosure. The second disclosure is called the final declaration of disclosure.
While many people choose to waive the final declaration of disclosure, you do not have the option to waive the preliminary declaration of disclosure. For assistance on completing this form, please watch our California Divorce form completion video series.
California law states that you and your spouse have a fiduciary financial duty to the other. That means that there is a very high duty of loyalty. As part of that fiduciary duty, you are required to be an open book and allow your spouse to see all of your financial information and assets, even if you owned the asset prior to your marriage.
On a practical basis, accurate financial disclosures help spouses, their attorneys, and the court to identify the estate. Identifying the estate makes settlement negotiations easier because there is clarity on what exists and what is owed. Accurate financial disclosures allow both parties to obtain a fair outcome with confidence.
The law states that each party must file a financial disclosure within 60 days of filing his or her initial paperwork. Specifically, the Petitioner must file within 60 days of filing the Petition, and the Respondent must file within 60 days of filing the Response. Final disclosures are required to be filed no later than 45 days before trial. The goal of drafting, filing, and serving the financial disclosures early on in the case is to provide clarity and transparency.
In short, you cannot avoid having to do at least one financial disclosure, called the preliminary declaration of disclosure. It is required by law, period. Many people believe that their situation is unique and that there is some kind of exception to the law based on their circumstances. Common situations include the following:. In every one of the above-mentioned scenarios, the answer remains the same: you are required to complete your financial disclosure before moving forward with your divorce.
You will not be able to obtain a divorce without completing your financial disclosures. You may be subject to sanctions fines , and may even lose the assets you refuse to disclose. Unfortunately, assuming your spouse is participating in the case, you will not be able to obtain a divorce until your spouse completes his or her financial disclosure.
The court can sanction fine your spouse and prohibit your spouse from producing evidence about his or her assets and debts if a financial disclosure has not been provided. You will first want to identify the areas in which the disclosure is incomplete or inaccurate. If your spouse still refuses to accurately disclose assets, you have a number of other options, including formal discovery and seeking court orders.
Serving discovery is discussed further in Step 8. In order to waive your final financial disclosures, you and your spouse will need a mutual agreement to do so. Saving yourself time now may hurt you in the future. Use our child support calculator to help estimate your child support obligation under California Child Support Guidelines.
Calculate Child Support. Discovery is the formal method of obtaining relevant information from your spouse. During divorce proceedings, you are permitted to obtain discovery up until 60 days before trial. You can serve discovery directly on your spouse using the following general categories:. This is a formal legal request for documents, electronically stored information, or other records.
It is a very useful tool to obtaining documents such as bank records, medical records, paycheck stubs, and tax returns. These are written questions that must be answered under penalty of perjury. There are two types of interrogatories in family law matters: Form Interrogatories and Special Interrogatories.
Form Interrogatories are standard questions that are commonly asked in divorce cases. Special Interrogatories are questions that are specifically tailored to your situation and spouse. This requires your spouse to admit or deny the truth of a statement under penalty of perjury. If your spouse admits a statement it is considered to be a fact that can be used at trial. Requests for Admissions are generally unhelpful without being used in conjunction with interrogatories.
Your spouse is required to answer a series of questions, and the proceeding is memorialized in a written transcript. You also have the option of serving discovery on third parties through something called a subpoena. Subpoenas can require the third party to provide documents, much like a Request for Production of Documents, or to testify in a deposition.
Subpoenas can be very good tools for obtaining employment records, medical records, bank records, and other records that your spouse may not have in his or her possession. Discovery is one of the many tools you have at your disposal during the divorce proceedings.
At its core, discovery is a process of information gathering. Every case is different, and as such, you need to determine whether or not discovery is the right strategy for your situation. The key to protecting your rights in a divorce is to make sure that you know what exists, including the good, bad, and ugly.
You cannot fully protect yourself without knowing what is out there. In general, discovery is one of the most expensive investments in a divorce. Not only does it cost money to prepare and serve discovery, but it also takes a substantial amount of time to review the documents and other answers to the discovery.
In addition to cost, discovery is often considered to be an act of war. Whenever you serve discovery, you should be prepared for your spouse to retaliate with the same requests and interrogatories. This may ultimately increase the conflict and tension. Finally, discovery can be abused. Some people can use this tool as a weapon, and so long as it is masked under a guise of being relevant, you will have little protection from the law. Discovery responses are generally due 30 calendar days after service.
If the discovery was served by mail, you have an additional 5 calendar days, changing your deadline to 35 days after service. If you or your spouse miss the deadline to respond to discovery, any objections to responding are automatically waived. If you need more time, you should ask for an extension. Discovery extensions are fairly common, and obtaining a written agreement for an extension that also preserves your ability to object to the discovery will protect you and your rights. If a person fails to respond to discovery, or the answers are incomplete, the party seeking the discovery may file a motion with the court to compel answers or the production of documents.
It is generally a good idea for both parties to discuss the outstanding discovery before going to the time and expense of filing a formal motion. If there was no response, the meet and confer is a suggestion but not a requirement.
Once all reasonable and good faith attempts have been made to resolve the issue, commonly known as a discovery dispute, then the motion to compel will likely be filed. A motion to compel must include the following:. The court can issue sanctions for failure to comply with the discovery process.
These sanctions include the following:. While the code does not specifically state the amount of attorney fees, the goal is to encourage both sides to be transparent and comply with the discovery process. If a party continues to fail to respond to discovery, a judge can issue a number of various nonmonetary sanctions. A motion to compel must be filed no later than 45 days after the response to the discovery was filed. If a person does not respond at all to discovery, he or she can be served with a motion to compel at any time.
When you opt for an online divorce, they quickly handle the paperwork for you, all while costing a lot less than a lawyer or mediator. Another plus: you can get through the entire process without ever seeing the inside of a California Superior Court. On the other hand, if you and your spouse do have some disagreements to work out, you probably already know that you can do this with a divorce attorney or through mediation.
As a general rule, mediation is a lot faster than the back-and-forth between lawyers. Less common is collaborative divorce, in which you and your spouse each hire an attorney and a mental health professional to serve as your personal advocates, as well as other shared professionals chosen according to the unique needs of your family.
With this method, the attorney client relationship is a bit different. The collaborative process is usually slower than mediation but faster than the traditional adversarial approach. One way to get divorced faster is to opt for a summary dissolution. To qualify, your divorce must be uncontested, you must be married for under five years, have no children together, have limited shared debts and assets, and both agree to waive spousal support.
If you do not qualify, the other fastest way to a divorce judgement is by working with an online platform. In California, there is no way to get a divorce certificate without waiting the mandatory six months after filing. However, if you fear for your safety, you might be able to obtain a temporary restraining order against your spouse at the time of filing.
In reality, the court system is bogged down enough that it tends to take a bit longer than that, even. To continue learning about divorce in California, see the following articles in the series:. We do not provide legal advice through the Service. The Service may facilitate access or introductions to an attorney or other licensed professionals in various ways, including, for example, by providing you with their contact information.
These services will not create an attorney-client relationship between you and OverEasy. OverEasy It's Over Easy is not a lawyer, law firm, lawyer directory, or a lawyer referral service. OverEasy does not endorse or recommend any particular lawyer, or any other professional, that is listed in the index.
After six months, a San Francisco divorce attorney may notify the court that a trial will be needed to settle the marriage. Getting a court date can take time, but there is a shortcut to divorce. The court can terminate the marriage any time after the six-month waiting period, while still allowing the couple to continue to negotiate the terms of the divorce.
However, bifurcation of a marriage is rare. If a divorcing couple takes longer than five years to reach an agreement, the divorce will be cancelled.
The spouses will have to file the paperwork again to reinitiate the divorce. This will reset the waiting period. Are you ready to move on? First, for most couples, in order to get a divorce in California, at least one party must reside in the state for a minimum of six months. Further, there is a six-month waiting period between filing for divorce and the divorce being decreed. There are two ways to start the clock:. If the parties agree on all issues, they can write a joint agreement and file it with the court.
The parties can submit their agreement at the time of filing or later if they need some time to resolve all aspects of their divorce. Parties often meet with a mediator to resolve their issues.
If a couple submits an agreement, the judge usually signs it into a decree of divorce when the waiting period ends. When the parties cannot agree, a court must decide the issues through a trial.
As such, how quickly one can get a divorce becomes dependent on how quickly a trial court can schedule a hearing when all relevant parties and witnesses are available. The court then takes testimony on the issues, which may require one or more days. Then the court takes the case under advisement and considers the issues before issuing a ruling.
0コメント