Signature Block Postnuptial Agreement Template Made Easy

Signature block postnuptial agreement template

hi and welcome to Deanna Menaka family la Channel today I would like to talk about basics because I ended up repeating the same principles three different times for approximately three hours today with three different clients so I decided to create this video because it will explain a little bit about California law what separate property is about terminology about basic rights and this will not constitute a legal advice please take it or leave it this is my experience how I perceive family law and I practice family law in San Francisco I just passed the certified family law specialist exam I feel confident into this video so I hope it helps let's get started alright so first principle that I tell my clients when they come to my office and asking questions about divorce what was the date of marriage the date of marriage is important because it starts it's the point where community property starts accumulating the second part is what is the date of separation date of separation has been litigated in the last couple years there was a case of appeal that was reversed in any case date of separation to simplify it is when one party either moves out or doesn't move out but there is a clear understanding of one party expresses I do not want to be together it's called irreconcilable differences arise meaning we don't want to be together and it's irreversible so let's say that of marriage is 1 1 mm in that of separation is 1 1 2010 just for the purposes of this conversation today so we'll look at anything that both parties brought into the marriage it's called separate property so let's say I had separate bank account my car whatever so that remains my separate property meaning it does not become part of community property there are little exceptions out there I will tell them I'll tell you about them later or not exceptions actually diversion of that and the same for that a partner so and then on the date of marriage whatever is accumulated through personal skill set is called community property and is divided 50/50 and for example let's say to simplify things I have a tree and that tree could be considered as bank account retirement house anything and that tree produces apples so if the tree produces Apple and the tree separate property the apples would be separate property now during the marriage I what are the tree and not only I water the tree my husband improves on the house that I purchased let's say I purchased the house here I'm I have my name on it and we all live in that house I put down payment and paying mortgage payments and he pays mortgage payments and that's where the diversion here happens technically the house is separate property house but because I'm investing my and my husband is investing personal skill set and paying mortgage from a salary that becomes somewhat depending on the amount of years which would be helpful to base to figure out how much community property the house will eat now community so if it's 40 years and I paint for the house 200,000 then Code section what is it 20 anyway I'm not gonna hold myself accountable to the code section when one code section says I get my $200,000 back dollar for dollar and the rest is it not by the community if I didn't pay the down payment mortgage payments here I just made downpayment all right so that's the basic principle then the second part so I say to my clients the topics we're going to discuss is property division spousal support child support child custody and how divorce process works how much it cost and what about the Trinity's so these are the topics that we are going to talk about I covered a little bit of the property division so that you know the basic principle and again we have date of marriage date of separation what about retirement accounts let's say I marry it was zero and then I started earning and putting into retirement what do you think will happen I don't have much time probably on this video to go into the so called Quadro I can create a different video on that but in nutshell the legislature developed so-called qualified domestic relationship water basically in order to give 50 percent of the retirement I cannot just take the money out and cash it out without paying penalty in taxes penalty and taxes can be very high don't hold me to the number but they're high I don't know exactly the number so let's say the legislation developed that spouses who are going through divorce in order to avoid to pay taxes and penalties they create so-called Quattro and wheelers usually hired a firm Madden Schwarz for example who creates for $600 a quadrille order that we submit to the court and then submit to the pension provider who called it's called rolled over the pension to let's say husband's account and that's that's developed and again it ends right here verses house if if we still own the house we don't evaluate the house as of date of separation we evaluate the house as of the date of trial unless agreed otherwise why because from that date I always recommend my clients to open their own separate bank account from the date of separation in order to avoid double dipping always open your separate bank account again this is not legal advice but what I recommend so that the separate money separate income goes into that account and is now becoming 50% of you don't need to divide this to 50% so you just keep it and the same with with retirement when when you separate money you earn doesn't become the money that is going to be in the pool of 5050 so but that was the house is going in value up and up without you doing anything so that's why the house is evaluated at the date of trial there are other topics like stock options iris use and what how to deal with houses do I sell do I buy my spouse out all of these issues are case specifics specific and I'm not gonna go into them here in this video so I will go forward with spousal support spousal support again we're looking at the date of marriage and then the date of separation the law says that if the marriage is longer than 10 years it's considered as long-term marriage why is it important because there's another code section that says if the marriage is longer than 10 years then spousal support can be permanent permanent meaning until the receiving spouse dies remarries or cavities for someone who supports that receiving spouse receiving support you understand what I mean the spouse who receive support kaha BJ's with someone who helps with the bills so let's assume the marriage is not ten years the marriage is eight years if the marriage is below ten years it's considered short term marriage and then the spousal support is considered half of the length of the marriage which would be four years and we have cliched scenario dad who works and let's say he earns hundred K here and mom stay home mom who takes care of the kids a huge business to take care of the kids however financially let's say she's not working right now and only dad makes money in this case it's approximate amount she will receive 40% of his net income there are formulas used in in court and there are also online disa masters that can be used it's called this a master calculator if you would like to know the numbers just go on Google and say California child support calculator and then there will be a free software then when you scroll down to the very bottom you will find temporary spousal support and if you're let's say in Santa Clara then you click Santa Clara and then it will calculate and then you can see a lot of things are going to be deductible like mandatory retirement things that are mandatory you can say my house is so expensive I'm spending $10,000 I can't pay child support that doesn't work so you can see what what is actually deductible and there are two ways that spousal support is defined one is temporary soft support and one is permanent spousal support as the word temporary suggests it's only temporary for the time being while divorce is pending meaning the worst can be pending in court for years I my clients usually ask me how long the storage tank usually I would say in the regular average case was a big drama around that month so for the time being based on the calculation based on Medusa masseter and during divorce that's how support is calculated then we have permanent support permanent support is after divorce is final and it's based on so-called 4320 factor of 20 of 4320 factors Family Code section there are 20 factors I'm going to talk about only sweet standard of living a need of receiving party and ability of paying party to pay standard of living is based on how do you based on art of living you just look at your tax returns of your expenses for the last 5 years and that's easy to establish standard of living verses here let's say if husband earns a million but here for the last 5 years here and only hundreds of K then the expectation to receive spousal support here is different and she's based on dissomaster calculator forty percent or thirty seven percent or something like that if there are no children and here if you look at the average was this number and the needs are still reasonable then it's going to be completely different number here and then I spoke I talked already about determination of spousal support spousal support can be terminated whether with an agreement or for example long-term marriage the the nightmare of some people is when spousal support doesn't get terminated when long-term marriage and then the court reserves jurisdiction over lifetime so when you do negotiations maybe pay attention to ask that the other spouse who is self-supporting agrees in a long term marriage to terminate spousal support forever and to terminate court's jurisdiction to talk about this issue forever in exchange for a lump sum so that's that gives a little bit insurance to not have to deal with it let's say if a spouse becomes disabled 10 years from now and ask for spousal support and you haven't idea the family you would like to avoid that again there are more details about spousal support that I might have to create a different video for example if husband says you know what I don't want to pay you spousal support I'm gonna stop working then and he earns two and a thousand dollars and now he's not working and living in Mexico was his new girlfriend well what do you do you file and ask for imputation of his of his income meaning you ask the court to impute to the level that he used to earn because he voluntarily stopped paying in order to avoid paying you spousal support and the court has authority to do that there are some burden of proof that needs to be shown that he did not voluntarily and then it shifts to him to prove and add it anyway I'm not gonna go into details but that's something to pay attention or if let's say wife was for five years employed and then she decided not to be employed it became freelance but she has the ability to earn a lot of money then you have the opportunity to ask the court to get vocational evaluator to to look at her ability to work on the market and how much money she would receive and that way the court would have the authority to imputed the income so there was a lot of shortcuts about spousal support I'm gonna move on child support and child Augusta all right so child custody is more important because child custody and visitation will lead to how much support the spouse will get child custody is based on terminology solo joint and then legal and physical I gotta give this example out of my way I get so many clients call me on the phone they don't know me and they call me up and they say Jana my husband cheated on me I need to file for sole custody I wanna have I I want him to not see our children at all this is it I want to do that so and I always say the same thing it's whatever is going on first of all California is not fault state so what he did I'm sorry he had experienced that but it has nothing to do with the topic of child custody so in order to get sole custody has to be very significant very very very significant attack on a non personality on the person being abusive and not just emotionally physically a drug addiction we're talking about high level and being unfit to be a parent so moving on that that being said Solar legal custody and physical custody is awarded in rare cases of the case I described joint means both parents sole means just one parent physical means where the child resides most of the time and legal means who makes the major decisions about child's life and usually in 99% of the cases it's awarded to both parent and if the child is very very little or typically I it's it's it's cliche again but it's it's happening all the time that mother's days was let's say a newborn baby and father sees every other weekend solo is awarded to mother because that's the primary residence of the child so some people call it full custody but the the real term is solo and then it's called 50/50 custody now a 50/50 custody has nothing to do with visitation you can have 50/50 custody but 10% visitation how is that well the visitation is the percentage of time you spend with your child and if you wanna wear how to calculate percentage I would be - it's it's math just go online and Google again child support calculator California and then find that calculator and then there will be on top percentage spend with parent one and then you will find that number and if you click on advanced there will be a whole line of calculations that you can manually manually put in for example every other weekend might turn out to be 17% and then below you can put two weeks in a in in in in three months and then a quarter will put over to the percentage so remember 50/50 custody has nothing to do with visitation and then finally on them child support and custody topic we are moving on to a child support there are two different child support topics one is basic and another one idan expenses at Ed's on basic child support is based what we just discussed is the percentage like if you spend 10% and then the income of each party of each parent it's pretty pretty it's it's it's it's based on this semester calculator so add-ons are child care what is child care child care is sorry I'm having writing in to clear child care child care is for example babysitter cost if that goes to work and needs a babysitter or looking for a job then child care costs usually are shared 5050 I unless there is such a disparity in income that it would be unjust to have 50/50 split the court might consider proportionate to the income split then visitation visits driving cost for the visitation and medical expenses outside out-of-pocket medical and then there are also extra curricular activities there are all there are lots of other things that both parents can agree to split fifty-fifty such as school whatever else on top but this can be calculated into the domestic calculator all right moving on to the process and attorneys fees I can summarize it maybe in a few minutes hopefully all right the process there are two ways to get divorced one way is called uncontested I'm a contestant means no fight no court and another way is contested both ways start the same way someone has to file a petition I probably get every week a question about who files first whether it's beneficial if I file first it doesn't matter who files first the only time when it matters who files first if you live a different state for example if I live in California and my husband lives in Germany then if I want to be divorced handled in California that I would file in California and serve him through Hague Convention which is not a topic for a different video to Germany for example if I have an amicable divorce and I want to take over the entire case and I want to be in charge I would file the petition because if my spouse doesn't respond they can file the default package so well actually I reverse my answer it does matter for these reasons otherwise if you both agree that you're gonna end up having an agreement and you both are going to cooperate and work together then another donor so once the petition is filed which is together with summons and sometimes with arbitration notice depending on your county that needs to be served why does it need to be served well service in delivery of paperwork that was filed was a case number that notifies that a party that the case has started there are three ways to serve which I'm not going to go into this in this video but once it surf the clock starts ticking for six months in one day where a lot of people would like to be single but no sooner than six months and one day from the date of service and it doesn't happen automatically I know some people think that after six months and a one day of doing nothing they will become single no I have to break it to you in California Court nothing happens automatically maybe divorce gets dismissed maybe I don't know it never happened to me but sometimes I could imagine divorce might get dismissed if someone files petition and doesn't do for anything for 10 years but most of the time you have to be proactive if you want to finish this divorce you need to file a petition you need to hire someone to serve acad you it has to be someone else over 18 ideally professional process server because if your spouse says I wasn't served it is presumed to be served if it's professional process ever moving on so in both cases it's the same needs to be served then the receiving spouse called business the petitioner who files the petition the receiving spouse it's called respondent respondent has 30 days to respond if he or she doesn't like what petition says to clean up the record especially if petition says I would like to keep all of the accounts in my name and in your name I would definitely run in file if the petition says everything to be determined then it doesn't matter because it's hard to file a default on something where it's open and to be determined then uncontested part can be settled through so called marital settlement agreement where you sit down and create a prenuptial agreement but it's called marital settlement agreement that's similar to prenuptial agreement that it's post-nuptial agreement where you have to do shiri duty to disclose to each other all of your assets and settle all of the aspects that we discussed right here in here if you don't have lawyers at your signatures probably would need to be notarized depending on the county you're in and then once that signed you have to file uncontested uncontested or default if he didn't respond default was agreement if he responded uncontested package to finalize the divorce and then the court approves it might take three to four months Santa Clara takes in half in some cases but I had I hope one day it changes but if you're in Santa Clara actually I propose that you hire a private judge to sign off on your paperwork Marin County is the fastest it was happening in two weeks literally alright so in contested package we have the same process and then except it doesn't go away with marital settlement agreement probably you can yes those two court by writing today's theory okay you know what I mean so when you end up in court again nothing happens automatically if you would like to get spousal support attorneys fees or you would like to establish custody you have to file a motion it's called the request for order it's a farm FL 300 and once you file you get a hearing date the hearing date is on only giving you 20 minutes I mean some counties recently most conscious adopted it you get actually a judge to order to make an order at day before so if you don't go online and check and check the docket you might miss your hearing and you might arrive and the judge says too late I made my order yesterday and you didn't object so this is the order so pay attention in what country you're in to go online and see if there is a tentative ruling so in order to avoid the order to be in effect but remember you get only twenty minutes so if you file something related to custody the judge is not going to decide your case about your child in 20 minutes the court is gonna send it to mediator mediator is someone who Gord assigns for both parents it takes about three hours to figure out the schedule and depending on recommending or not recommending county the court will adopt the recommendation of the mediator and then it becomes an order if you're not satisfied or if you feel like you have more evidence to show and the court agrees then you can get a trial date trial is something that could take between two hours up to I hurt I haven't been involved in that trial but I heard about a move away trial that took nine days where a mother wanted to move away to a different state so that's the process and then eventually you can still have an MSA and if you go to trial the court might give not might and divorce the court gives unless it's a domestic violence or studying or a case manager a settlement conference date where you get to meet with an attorney typically it's volunteer attorney who has seven go specialist exam who helps to negotiate the case it's like a buffer and some courts have also Judicial Conference settlement as the word judicial and suggest it's a it's a judge not related to this case but the judge who will help to settle this case and then the third buffer if two buffers are not men then it goes to trial no buffer so that's how it goes before I wipe it away Virginia's got this package in my firm its customer at five thousand dollars uncontested if it could be less so five thousand dollars is based on hourly wage right now as we have as we speak right now $395 and we are in October 2009 teen this package based on that hour the weight and if that goes smooth no negotiations nothing it might add up three and a half thousand but typically there are some topics that become very hot and sturdy and then it depends on the other side's cooperation and how many back-and-forth it could be even sometimes ten because if the other side doesn't have so they've forgotten one thing it's called PDD preliminary declaration of discussion in both cases it's mandatory to exchange financial disclosures sometimes it becomes an issue where we have to send discovery requests of peanuts to banks we have to gather all the documents that the party is so busy they don't want to respond to anything that might raise the fees this part can become so uncontrollable anyway I'll start with ten I know a firm who charged $267,000 not my firm my firm so far $8,000 in a high litigation custody businesses everything was litigated literally even the issue which real estate person we're going to choose has been litigated it was crazy so that was so far the highest amount we talked about that cost all right attorneys fees I'm gonna wrap it up with attorney fees because I'm sure you're curious to know how it works and in civil law you could say the prevailing party gets guests keeps has to pay attorneys sorry it receives attorneys fees in family law it's not like that in family law there is no prevailing party it's about children it's about dividing assets there is no win actually in family law there are two ways of getting attorneys fees I'm simplifying it there are many other ways about discovery Code sections I'm not gonna talk about this it's need-based and sanctions for some reason most people don't know what sanctions in sanctions is but penalty if you misbehave you have to pay it or it's called in a lawyer language 271 sanction if you Google Family Code section 271 you can read what kind of misbehavior is sanctionable and then need-based in our example husband earns him a thousand wife earns zero he has to pay attorneys fees maybe five thousand dollars the point is the spouse who doesn't have the money needs to have equal representation rights to ask for support to file motions uuugh so how complicated that can get about being proactive and serving and all the little details about discovery so that's when wife comes to the office and says he has access to all of the assets and I have we have five million what do I do I have literally he gives me credit card and he closed it and now he gives me allowance up to thousand dollars a week or something that's where typically either my law office so depending if I'm on the other side they received this spousal support ten attorneys fees so that they can say we need to hire CPA we need to divide the assets we need to go into discovery that's completing our session today I hope that was not too long