If you live in Los Angeles County and want to change your name, you will appreciate this improvement to the process. The court is now publishing its tentative decision on the court website under the Civil section of the page, as a tentative ruling. This is published one to two days before the the hearing date.  By typing in your case number you can easily see whether your name change was approved. If the name change is approved, then neither you or your attorney need appear. If the name change does not show as approved, then you or your attorney must appear at the name change hearing or the case will probably be dismissed. It is important that you verify for yourself that this procedure is still in effect as the court can and will change the procedure without notice. For more information about the name change process in Los Angeles and Orange Counties visit my site.

The initial filing fee for unlimited civil (including name changes), and family law cases (divorce, family law, paternity), and also the fee for Response or first appearance in these cases, has increased from $395.00 to $435 in both Los Angeles and Orange Counties.  There is still no fee required for requests for domestic violence restraining orders .  Expect an additional fee increase as a result of the 2012 budget cuts.  Current fees are on my website fee page

The Family Law Court Rooms in Long Beach have around twenty cases a day. Those cases that cannot be completely heard the first day are continued. Domestic violence hearings and Contempts have priority as far as continuences are concerned. Other matters are being continued to dates three to four months in the future. Again, uncontested divorce, and mediation avoid this courtroom jam up – if you and your spouse can work it out without a judge. The above is in addition to the delays in processing submitted Family Law pleadings that I have described in earlier posts.

The court budget cuts that have been mandated by the state over the last few years seem to be taking their toll on the Los Angeles County Family Law Court system. Local court houses are particularly affected. Processing judgments in Long Beach is now taking months; the same is proportionally true for other documents. I’ve also heard horror stories about Norwalk and Compton. Apparently one attorney was told that it would take six months from the time of filing to get a family law issue heard in Compton. One possible solution – work out your issues beforehand. By law, there is a minimum waiting period of six months in California before the court will divorce you. There is no waiting period for submitting the judgement – other than the time it takes to prepare and submit the prerequisite documents. We charge $1500 for an uncontested divorce.

AB 1406 would require that the Preliminary Declarations of Disclosure be served within 60 days of the filing of the Petition by the Petitioner in a divorce and would require the Respondent to serve Preliminary Declarations of Disclosure within 60 days of filing a Response. There have been numerous complaints by the public and in our media as to the time and difficulty of getting a divorce in California. Under the current law, Preliminary Declarations are required in order to divorce in California. Unfortunately, there is not also a law that requires filing of this Declaration in a timely manner. This can, and often does, extend a California divorce for years. This bill would eliminate a major impediment to timely divorce within California. I urge your support.

Under new legislation, (AB 1349) signed into law by the Governor in August, the filing of a voluntary declaration of Paternity is invalid if there is already a presumed father under the code. See the Paternity web page for more information.

Proposed California Spousal Support Revision

SB 481 would add to the list of criteria that a judge considers when setting spousal support. Under the proposed legislation the court would determine the extent to which the payer’s income is derived from an asset that has been divided pursuant to a division of property in the divorce. The effect of this bill would be to give relief to the spouse that has had to buyout the other spouses interest in the business as part of the divorce settlement by paying less in spousal support on income derived from a business that he has already paid for when awarded the business.

Current Proposed Revision to Family Law Code

SB 481, as amended, Wright. Spousal support.

Existing law authorizes a court to issue an order for spousal
support, and sets forth various circumstances the court is required
to consider in issuing the order including, among other things, the
ability of the supporting party to pay spousal support, and the
obligations and assets of each party.
This bill would require the court also to consider the extent to
which income for support was already capitalized and paid to the
other spouse in the division of community property, in order to avoid
double counting the income when the result would be inequitable.

Current Law

See Spousal Support web page

I saw that the court is now charging the requesting party for a court interpreter for Family Law matters in Long Beach. This does not include hearings on Domestic Violence Restraining Orders. The court in Compton also charges for use of an interpreter and requires parties to use the court interpreter.  Due to budget cuts the courts are less willing to let these type of fees slip through the cracks.  See my website for the charge for an interpreter.

A divorce is a lawsuit. Consequently it is considered good practice to ask the court for all the relief that it has jurisdiction to award in the initial pleadings.  This often means that a party may ask for relief in the pleadings that he or she does not currently desire or expect to actually receive.  e.g. the other side to pay attorney fees, terminating the court’s ability to award spousal support to the other side, requesting sole legal and physical custody of children.  Attorneys usually are uncomfortable not asking the court for this relief, because the circumstances and desires of the parties can significantly change over the course of a divorce or paternity case.  On the other hand, seeing, what seems like, unreasonable requests in the other party’s initial paperwork can harden a party’s position and make compromise and settlement harder to obtain.  A recent example, indicative of the truth of the above,  was the filing of an amended Response file by former Governor Schwarznegger,  wherein his attorney removed the requests on his original Response regarding spousal support and attorney fees.

One of the anachronisms currently built into our Family Code is California Family Code Section 4673.  This is the section that requires  a  level of secrecy in child custody and/or child support cases involving unmarried or single parents that is not required in cases involving married or formerly married parents.  This is a law seemingly made for times when the stigma of illegitimate birth was a genuine issue for those born out of wedlock.  Today however, I suspect even the terms “illegitimate birth” and “born out of wedlock” have no meaning to all but the oldest among us.

The practical effect of this law is to add to the expense, complication and frustration of a process that can be challenging to even the most reasonable parents.   Unlike divorced or divorcing parents, unmarried parents and their attorneys are not allowed to access records of previous actions or upcoming court hearings online.  Reviewing case records at the court house requires a party or his or her attorney to prove their identity and in the case of an attorney, prove that they are the attorney of record.

The section reads as follows:

§ 7643. Confidentiality of hearings and records

(a) Notwithstanding any other law concerning public hearings and records, a hearing or trial held under this part may be held in closed court without admittance of any person other than those necessary to the action or proceeding. Except as provided in subdivision (b), all papers and records, other than the final judgment, pertaining to the action or proceeding, whether part of the permanent record of the court or of a file in a public agency or elsewhere, are subject to inspection and copying only in exceptional cases upon an order of the court for good cause shown.

(b) Papers and records pertaining to the action or proceeding that are part of the permanent record of the court are subject to inspection and copying by the parties to the action, their attorneys, and by agents acting pursuant to written authorization from the parties to the action or their attorneys. An attorney shall obtain the consent of the party to the action prior to authorizing an agent to inspect and copy the permanent record. An attorney shall also state on the written authorization that he or she has obtained the consent of the party to authorize an agent to inspect and copy the permanent record.

This issue has been news lately in the Paternity Case between unmarried parents, Oksana Grigorieva and Mel Gibson, due to the leaking of court records in violation of, among other things, this code section.

This is just one of the anachronisms present in our California Code Sections.  I’ll address the inefficiencies resulting from the requirements to give public notice (change of name) in newspapers in a later post.