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Hi, everyone. Welcome to another Family Law Matters. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell, joining Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, who’s the owner and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group here in San Diego.

Hi, Bonnie. Hi, Michael. How are you doing today? Doing great.

Thank you very much. We have a topic that is an interesting topic, and I think some people think, oh yeah, I know what that is, and other people are like, yeah, wow, I never thought of that. So let’s talk about this.

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Temporary orders in a divorce case. Let’s get into this. It seems logical that initially the first set of orders are temporary until we get to court, but some people may not understand where these come from, what they are.

Can you describe a little bit more and educate us on temporary orders? Sure. Well, when somebody files for a divorce, they file a petition and they file a summons, and that gets served on the other party. And when the other party gets those documents, on the back of the summons, there’s what are called automatic temporary restraining orders, because when you get sued for divorce, you might get angry.

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And so people tend to get vindictive. So they run and they want to remove their spouse from their health insurance that they cover through their employer, because now we’re getting divorced, or they want to remove them as beneficiaries from other insurance, or they think it’s okay to drain the bank account, or they try to take the kids and move away. All of those are included in the temporary restraining orders.

And if you try to do any one of those things, you are going to be in a lot of trouble. Our judges have very long memories, and that starts out the case really bad for you. That’s one set of temporary orders.

Then there’s the other one that people are more familiar with, Michael, temporary support orders. When you first get your first set of support orders, that’s done by filing a motion. The main purpose, keep the status quo.

Your family was used to living on $100,000 a year. Your children need this much, your wife or your husband needs this much. And that’s how we’re going to try to keep the status quo.

They’re temporary, until the court gets a lot more information, or until the parties reach an agreement, or until you get to judgment. After judgment, orders become permanent. And what’s interesting is that when it’s in the middle of the divorce, you can more easily change those orders.

Circumstances have changed, somebody lost a job, somebody got a job. Those things, we agree that we can use this part of our money, easier to change. But when you have permanent orders, after your judgment has been filed, it’s a lot harder to change those orders.

You need to show a significant change in circumstances to change custody, support, or any of those other property divisions. I know that’s long-winded. Well, yeah, I know.

But I mean, it’s so interesting, because the initial debate, if you will, you get the orders, and you look and say, wait a minute, what is he or she saying? I can’t do this, or I have to do this, or she can do this. But then you begin to have your arguments about that back and forth, correct? Yeah, it’s not so much an argument back and forth for those initial ones. Those are just by statute.

You cannot undo your entire world to essentially screw with the other side. So those are done to protect both parties. If you have a house, and somebody gets vindictive, and they go, and they take a second on your home, now all of a sudden, you can’t do that, or you can’t run away with the kids.

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Right, that’s the way. Those really important ones at the beginning to make sure everybody, all the things stay the same so that we can properly divide them. And that’s when, after that, when you go into court, and there’s… There’s some, right, when you file a motion, hey, we’re sharing the kids.

She or he makes more money than the other person. We need some support orders. Those are called interim orders.

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They’re the orders done now to get you through to the next step. Very interesting. I don’t think many people think about what these temporary orders really are all about.

I’m glad we brought it up. As always, Bonnie, insightful, ingenious, you bring clarity, and another wonderful Family Law Matters. Thank you.

Now, if people have questions to dig into this a little more deeply, how can they reach you? Well, it is a very large topic that you can never do in one of these just Family Law Matters. So if they want to reach out and talk about this a little bit more in depth, our number is 619-574-8000. Or you can reach us online at www.PrimusFamilyLaw.com.