California's legislature has given husbands, wives and domestic partners of any persuasion the right to dissolve their marriages or domestic partnerships on the basis of irreconcilable differences.
Fault is not an issue. Dissolution of either relationship involves three major tasks, or only two if you don't have minor children.
The first is identifying all of the assets and debts both of you have, characterizing each as community or separate, dividing the community items in half and confirming which separate items belong to each of you.
Everything you earn or acquire while you were married, which for convenience in this discussion includes being in a domestic partnership, and still living together before your date of separation is presumed to be community, the same is true for debts.
Separate assets and debts are those you had before you married, gifts or inheritances you received while married and assets and debts explicitly acquired by you as separate property while married.
The second task is child support. A computer program is mandatory for determining child support.
What counts is the ratio of the times each of you has responsibility for the kids and each of your average monthly incomes over the past 12 months. These days, you have to be a very bad person or live in Outer Mongolia not to have joint legal and physical custody.
If you can't agree on who has the kids when, don't start World War III over it. The state will be happy to decide what's best for them whether you like it or not.
Before a judge can make an order on the subject, you have to go to mediation with a Social Services mediator. If you still can't agree, the mediator will recommend a schedule to the judge, who will adopt the recommendation as the order almost every time.
The third task is spousal support, which is either temporary (pre-judgment) or permanent (post-judgment). If you can't agree, the computer program for child support also spits out a number for temporary spousal support.
It's not mandatory to use the number, but it's usually what is ordered. The judges aren't supposed to use the program for permanent spousal support, but they do anyway.
Unless you've been married for only a few years, the judge will probably not order a termination date for spousal support. If you want it recalculated or terminated, you'll have to come back later and convince the judge that something has changed to justify doing so.
Each party has an obligation to become self supporting and to contribute to the support of the kids, but it's easier to announce the rule than enforce it.
Compelling a previously non-working spousal support recipient back into full-time employment is a protracted and expensive proposition.
For more information, call Stanley D. Prowse at (760) 438-8460 or visit www.stanprowse.com.
Fault is not an issue. Dissolution of either relationship involves three major tasks, or only two if you don't have minor children.
The first is identifying all of the assets and debts both of you have, characterizing each as community or separate, dividing the community items in half and confirming which separate items belong to each of you.
Everything you earn or acquire while you were married, which for convenience in this discussion includes being in a domestic partnership, and still living together before your date of separation is presumed to be community, the same is true for debts.
Separate assets and debts are those you had before you married, gifts or inheritances you received while married and assets and debts explicitly acquired by you as separate property while married.
The second task is child support. A computer program is mandatory for determining child support.
What counts is the ratio of the times each of you has responsibility for the kids and each of your average monthly incomes over the past 12 months. These days, you have to be a very bad person or live in Outer Mongolia not to have joint legal and physical custody.
If you can't agree on who has the kids when, don't start World War III over it. The state will be happy to decide what's best for them whether you like it or not.
Before a judge can make an order on the subject, you have to go to mediation with a Social Services mediator. If you still can't agree, the mediator will recommend a schedule to the judge, who will adopt the recommendation as the order almost every time.
The third task is spousal support, which is either temporary (pre-judgment) or permanent (post-judgment). If you can't agree, the computer program for child support also spits out a number for temporary spousal support.
It's not mandatory to use the number, but it's usually what is ordered. The judges aren't supposed to use the program for permanent spousal support, but they do anyway.
Unless you've been married for only a few years, the judge will probably not order a termination date for spousal support. If you want it recalculated or terminated, you'll have to come back later and convince the judge that something has changed to justify doing so.
Each party has an obligation to become self supporting and to contribute to the support of the kids, but it's easier to announce the rule than enforce it.
Compelling a previously non-working spousal support recipient back into full-time employment is a protracted and expensive proposition.
For more information, call Stanley D. Prowse at (760) 438-8460 or visit www.stanprowse.com.