REALIZE SIGNIFICANT COST SAVINGS IN DIVORCE AND FAMILY LAW CASES WITH UNBUNDLED LEGAL SERVICES OR LIMITED SCOPE REPRESENTATION

This blog addresses two cost-saving types or "scopes" of legal services that you can obtain to enable you to receive valuable guidance in your divorce or family law case and/or representation in specific issues or portions of your case from an experienced Family Law Attorney in areas where you require assistance, while not incurring the expense of full-service representation.

Those two scopes of services are Unbundled Legal Services and Limited Scope Representation.

"Unbundled Legal Services" are consultation services for a self-represented person by a lawyer who advises and assists you but doesn't represent you.  For details regarding Unbundled Legal Services, please click on any of the Unbundled Legal Services links in this blog.

"Limited Scope Representation" (or Limited Scope Legal Representation) is representation by a lawyer on a specific issue, or for a specific hearing or portion of your case, while you remain self-represented for the balance of issues and portions of your case.  For details regarding Limited Scope Representation, please click on any of the Limited Scope Representation links in this blog.

Both of those scopes of legal services enable people to save money while providing them quality legal advice and/or representation for crucial areas of their cases where they most need such assistance.

Unbundling and Limited Scope Representation afford you a la carte pricing.  You avoid having to pay the significant retainer fee required for full-service representation, and you avoid ongoing billings on things that the lawyer would have no choice but to handle with full-service representation.  You decide what you want to do yourself and what you want the lawyer to do.  That way, you can realize significant cost savings and greater control of your legal expenses, while obtaining legal assistance on things that you are ill-prepared to accomplish by yourself. 

At the Warner Center Law Offices of DONALD F. CONVISER, a Professional Corporation, we offer a choice of Unbundled Legal Services, Limited Scope Representation, or Full-Service Legal Representation, to assist and/or represent people in connection with their Divorce or Family Law cases, primarily in Los Angeles County and Ventura County.

CAN I MAKE A GIFT OF MONEY TO MY RELATIVES BEFORE FILING FOR DIVORCE?

QUESTION:  Can I give money to my adult daughters as a gift and not have it be considered part of the marital assets or community property if I gift it before filing for divorce? Also, can I give money to my nieces or nephews for college and have it excluded or not included if it's given away before filing? I understand trying to hide or dispose of assets after filing isn't legal.

================================================

MY ANSWER:  Your proposed "gifts", whether before or after the divorce is filed, will come back to haunt you in your divorce case. You have a fiduciary duty to your spouse during the marriage until all community assets are distributed pursuant to a divorce Judgment, to manage and preserve community assets for the benefit of the marital community. If you give any funds away, not only will you not have those funds available to share with your spouse, but the Court will order you to pay your spouse his/her community share of those funds, and may impose monetary sanctions on you [possibly in the amount of your community share as well as your spouse's community share] for intentionally disposing of community assets to deprive your spouse of his/her community share. Don't make the "gifts". You'll be made very sorry if you do.

WHO WOULD GET CUSTODY OF MY MINOR CHILDREN IF I DIE?

QUESTION:  If I have sole physical and legal custody of my minor children and I die, would the surviving parent automatically get custody of the children or would the surviving parent have to take my family to court?

====================================== 

MY ANSWER:  On your death, the surviving parent would normally be automatically entitled to custody of your minor children. However, other interested parties could petition the Probate Court for guardianship of the minor children if the surviving parent is an inappropriate parent, is in prison, is in a mental institution, etc.

CAN I SEEK HALF OF CHILD CARE EXPENSES?

QUESTION: My child's father and I just received a modification of support per his request. I was not given any credit towards daycare expenses I have been paying, and the judge just mailed the new order. Can I now file and ask for 1/2 of child care to be paid directly to our provider? Our provider is my mother, who is licensed and in business in our county. She lives with me full time, and has been taking care of our child since day 1 so we can both work. Now that support has gone down due to increased weekend timeshare, I cannot afford to pay child care on my own. ================================================ MY RESPONSE: You should have brought that matter up at the last Child Support hearing. If you requested, at that hearing, that the father share in the child care expenses, and the Court denied your request, the Court likely won't allow you a second bite of the same apple. If you didn't bring that matter up at the last Child Support hearing, you could bring it up in a separate OSC, but you might not prevail for a number of reasons. A material change of circumstances has not occurred since the last OSC - the same circumstances prevail (other than the modification of custody and Child Support that resulted from that OSC). Also, the fact that your child care provider is your mother (as opposed to a 3rd party child care provider) could be a problem. However, it probably wouldn't hurt for you to file an OSC to seek an order for the father to pay 1/2 of the child care expenses (or even a proportionate share based on your respective incomes).

CAN I LEAVE CALIFORNIA WITH MY BABY?

QUESTION: I have a 3 month old baby and i want to leave California to move to Texas with my sister. The father of the baby did sign the birth certificate but is not in the picture. Is it ok to move out of state? I never married the father of the baby. ================================================== MY RESPONSE: Yes, you can move to Texas with your baby. There are no restraining orders in place to restrain you for doing so, and the father evidently isn't interested in a relationship with his child. You would best apprise the father of your move, and your Texas address, to protect you against parental kidnapping claims. Once your baby has lived in Texas for six (6) months, Texas will become your child's "home state" for Uniform Child Custody and Jurisdiction Enforcement Act purposes, provided no action for chid custody or visitation had been instituted in California before then.

CAN MY EX HUSBAND GET CHILD SUPPORT FROM ME IF I AM UNEMPLOYED?

QUESTION: I am a stay at home mom. I am remarried with 2 children. I have a previous marriage/divorce and a daughter. In 12 yrs I have only worked for 2 years when my current husband was out of work. My ex husband wants child support for my other daughter. I have no income. If I go to work, I will have to pay for child care for my other 2 children. which we are highly against. Can he get support? I am a noncustodial parent of my daughter with my ex-husband. ================================================== MY RESPONSE: It is unlikely that your ex-husband can get an Order for Child Support against you under those circumstances. In order to get such an Order, if you are not employed, your ex-husband would have to persuade the Court to impute income to you, i.e., he would have to prove that job opportunities exist in your locale that you are qualified for. There is a possibility that the Court could issue a seek work order to require you to seek work, since both parties are responsible for the support of their children. A lot of parents need to put their children in child care to accommodate their need to work to earn money, so a mere objection to putting your child/children in child care, without more, may not be persuasive to the Court.

WAS IT LEGAL FOR MY WIFE TO SECRETLY RECORD A PRIVATE CONVERSATION THAT WE HAD?

QUESTION: There was a restraining order against me that lasted for one year but it had been terminated for approximately three months at the time when she secretly recorded our face-to-face private conversation. I had no idea that she was recording our conversation. Is the recording legal? ================================================== MY RESPONSE: If there was no restraining in effect at the time your wife made her surreptitious recording of you, granting her permission to secretly record the conversation, her recording of you was illegal and criminal, and you can object to the introduction of any evidence from that recording based on its illegality.