Affordable Family Law Attorney+ Reviews C. Chan Chico, Placer, Sacramento

Family Law: What Type of Attorney Do You Really Need?

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BEWARE:  WARNING.................

HUGE ISSUE IN REAL ESTATE IF YOUR SEPARATE PROPERTY HOUSE IS UNDER WATER..............NEVER, NEVER, NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!!

If you have any issue in divorce,  involving a property like a house, which is under water, absolutely do NOT let any officer of the court (Judge, commissioner,etc.) GIVE your house to the other party if you paid big cash down--- unless you don't want the house at all....ever.   Get help fast from a family law attorney who has handled these cases as it appears that some in Butte County don't understand how to handle this.

There is a lot written about reimbursements in CA family law cases, and some very messy litigation in the published cases. Typically, a CA FC2640 reimbursement http://codes.findlaw.com/ca/family-code/fam-sect-2640.html
arises when spouses  to the dissolution have spent their separate property money and then went in/out and out/in and changed things such that it's difficult to say who owned what, when, where, and how?

In some instances, each party claims reimbursement. Also note that reimbursement is not automatic if there are issues involving prior marriage, prior title changes, prior refinancing, or any changes to title, or removing people from title.  Further, evidence of someone writing a check for improvements, for example,  is generally not sufficient at all to prove tracing of payments, especially if the one paying had multiple accounts, commingled accounts, and was married, divorced, remarried, and then divorced again.

When a property is now "under water" meaning little to no equity, but one spouse had paid hard CASH and bought the property with $150,000 cash down---should that property (with no equity) just be given to the OTHER party?

The correct answer is usually NO.
But much of the published cases have divorces where there are other items and property so the Court can try and apportion the division.

Family Code 2640 has a provision (b) which says at the end,.."the amount reimbursed shall be without interest or adjustment for change in monetary values and may not exceed the net value of the property at the time of the division."  

Would that mean --- that anyone who paid cash for an asset in their name alone, where the asset was currently worth less than they paid at divorce trial (think CA 2007-to the rock bottom of real estate sales/foreclosures) --  that this means Judge should just give the asset (a house) away to the other spouse whose name was NEVER even on the house, it was not held in joint tenancy, there was no change to the title ever during the marriage, and the other spouse didn't even work to boot--the one that was GIVEN the house???  HELL NO!!!!!!
There is no way in the world that using the phrase in (b) above should cause one party's traceable asset to simply be GIVEN AWAY to the other person.
Family law specialist attorneys usually know this, however, NOT every commissioner or non family law judge, or even a new Family law judge, would necessarily KNOW this?!!

The division should be close to equal BUT when title was clearly held only in one name and there is no equity,  the person who owned the house should have been given the house (that party could re-finance or use a government program to change the mortgage!!)

A huge error like this where the FC2640 reimbursement was not possible due to no equity--but yet the Judge gave that very property to the spouse---this is an abuse of discretion TOTALLY!!!!

We aren't kidding here--there is an officer -- correction- WAS an Officer of the Court in Butte County at that time, and he  simply gave away the house to the person that wasn't on title and was on disability and couldn't afford to pay for the house anyway?
     And the person who OWNED the house had the separate property simply TAKEN from her?  and given to the other spouse???? This case had distinct grounds for appeal but the client chose NOT to do it. Had it been done, the client would be doing quite well now as the appreciation of the property would have been significant.

Never in a million years should this ever, ever, ever happen. Never. Especially when the documents for trial clearly indicated that such property was a separate property belonging to the spouse that put the cash down.

This is a BIG warning to family law litigants that are pro se-- if you have ANY separate property that has any value, even if under water, get help right away!!

Can You REDUCE Your Spousal Support?

Does this look like your ex shopping online spending all the spousal support?

In some cases, if there was no advance preparation for working on spousal support, and your ex never worked a day in her life, or was just plain lazy, or she did work, but kept getting fired-- all of these are good reasons not to get married again.....On the other hand, if you genuinely still like your ex, and you just can't really afford to pay her, you need to consider everything.... and I mean everything.

When you either went to court last, or were fighting in court, did your attorney tell you there were or were not any options re paying support? Did you definitely give the ex anything just to get rid of her complaining?  Did you understand how support is calculated and whether a workout was even possible?  Did you own property and attempt to cash out your part and then trade that for years of paying?
Did you have too much cash on hand or inherit a good sum where you did not even care how much she got?  Were you involved with increasing your child share time?  Did you waste most of your money on gambling, vacations or bad investments, or even other women?  Did you lose too much money in bad real estate transactions?  Did you have too much separate or community debt and failed to explore bankruptcy liquidation or wage earner planning?  Did you fail to size up what community debts/assets you took or didn't take, and then ended up on the losing end?

Once in awhile, in long term marriages, it is not entirely possible to reduce or pay less spousal. However, because the spousal is based in part, on the ability to pay, it actually IS possible to set up methods of having to pay less. Of course we are not talking about illegal methods. There are usually tradeoffs that can be considered. Attorney understands that it is highly upsetting to consider renting for the next 8 years while the ex not only gets the house, and lives in it, she still doesn't even work?  For these issues to be minimized or eliminated, one really has to get that thinking cap on.

Attorney is NEVER in favor of  (a) giving away anything, unless it can be rationalized elsewhere (monetarily)  or (b) keeping everything, because it's out of spite   (c) ignoring attorney, because you do not care anymore    (d) failing to keep track of finances, because of whatever reason  (e) being unreasonable, because you are driving up the ex's attorney bill on purpose....

Final question:

Did some judge tell you that if your completely separate

real property was under water, that even

 though you contributed 

all the cash, traceable funds

 into that real property, 

that he would just give that property 

to the other party because of some family law code??!!! 

..and that you just lost your hard earned cash ($100,000)  

you put down because judge knew what he was doing??? 

Believe me--that is definitely the WRONG ANSWER

 from any legal perspective. 

You don't need to be a family law specialist to know 

that lack of "equity" in separate property means 

you just give it away to the other person!!!! 

Wrong, wrong, wrong!!!  Do not ever let this happen to you. 

New Alimony Law Affecting Payors in 2019--Are You Ready?

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) eliminates the alimony DEDUCTION for the payor spouse as applied to divorce orders or modification orders executed on or after 1/1/19 if the modification states that the TCJA applies. POTENTIAL payors of alimony may want to obtain a divorce agreement or order before the end of the year.

Conversely, recipients of alimony may want to hold off until 2019 so that the alimony payments are non taxable.   https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2018/03/19/marital-dissolution-planning-after-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act/?slreturn=20180611105622

Without the alimony deduction as to the payor's taxable income,  the payor would have a tax increase, therefore obtaining the order prior to the cut off will likely end up saving the payor some funds in many cases. It is suggested that contacting your tax consultant is a wise idea.

Did You try and Do Your Spousal Support Hearing... by Yourself?

If you DID try to do this alone, and you had no idea how it would work, it would not be uncommon to find that people would not know what to do.  Many people believe they can outsmart the ex and devise all kinds of theories on how to get it done.  In attorney's experience, it usually does not work and will come back to haunt the person who did it.

Modification of spousal support is often a difficult issue because it can involve many factors. When the client has not adequately prepared for these, (and most clients haven't because they likely don't know what they are nor do they know what judges are likely to do), we have seen some clients get burned and not be able to recover.  For example, we have seen a case where the parties only were really married for four years but one party's attorney--the paying party's attorney--told the client she had to stick with 9 years, even though they didn't live together for 9 years. Actually, not living together is only part of the equation, as clients can be married and be separated physically. However if the relationship is broken down and one party simply pays the other party to survive, it could be argued that this was spousal support even if it wasn't ordered. If that could be true, then that paying party has been paying for years on that--there should be some credit for that, if the relationship was over and the parties dated others?

That's just one example. Surely there must be many more on this type of issue. Don't make a big mistake to save a few thousand and then get caught later for MANY thousands due to a mistake. A big one at that.