In this video, Charles M. Green, a Certified Family Law Specialist and CPA, explains how a California divorce ends when one spouse never responds to the divorce papers. He walks through each step, the paperwork involved, and the one mistake that can cost you a house, a retirement account, or support.
If your spouse doesn’t file a response within 30 days of being served, you can ask the court to enter a default. You then submit a default judgment to end the marriage. That judgment can only include what you asked for in your original petition, so the petition has to be complete.
A default divorce still follows a set process. Your spouse doing nothing does not let you skip steps.
This is the most important point in the video. A default judgment cannot give you anything you did not ask for in your original petition. California law limits default relief to what the petition requested (Code of Civil Procedure section 580).
Listing an asset on your financial disclosures is not enough. If the house, a retirement account, a request for child support, or a request for spousal support is missing from the petition, the court cannot add it to a default judgment.
If there is any chance your spouse will not respond, your petition should list everything you want the court to decide, including:
In Charles’s experience, having an attorney prepare the petition correctly usually costs far less than the value of an asset or support right lost because it was left off.
Your financial divorce starts with an inventory. What assets and debts existed on the date of separation? Different rules control when each item is valued and how it is divided, but that inventory is the starting point. In a likely default case, every item on that inventory belongs on the petition.
A judge may not sign a default judgment right away. If the case involves a house, retirement accounts, support requests, or an unequal division of property, the court may schedule a default prove-up hearing. A prove-up works like a short trial. You must prove what you asked for.
For example, property bought during the marriage is generally community property. If you want the court to award a house bought during the marriage to you as separate property, you need evidence. A down payment that came from a gift from your parents or an inheritance may be traced as separate property, which can support an award of all or part of the home.
Evidence is everything. The court decides based on what you can prove, not on what you believe or what you and your spouse discussed.
A spouse in default generally cannot be heard by the court. Child custody and visitation are the exception. Because children have a right to a relationship with both parents, a parent in default can still file a Request for Order on custody and visitation, either before the default judgment is entered or afterward to change it. Specific timing rules and legal standards apply.
A default does not speed up the end of the marriage. Under California Family Code section 2339, your marital status cannot end until at least six months after your spouse was served. The judge can sign your judgment earlier, but the divorce does not become final before that six-month date.
The video covers a true default, where your spouse does nothing at all. In some cases, a spouse does not file a response but signs a written settlement agreement. That agreement then becomes part of the judgment. The steps are similar, but the agreement shapes the outcome instead of the petition alone.
Ignoring divorce papers does not stop the divorce. Once you are in default, you generally cannot file a response or speak at a prove-up hearing. The court may let you sit in the courtroom, but you cannot take part, except on child custody and visitation issues.
California law does allow a default or default judgment to be set aside in certain situations, but strict deadlines apply. If you were served and did not respond, speak with a family law attorney as soon as possible.
If an asset or debt was never divided in the judgment, the court keeps the power to divide it after the divorce (Family Code section 2556). This is called omitted asset litigation. It is a separate and often complicated process, and it is easier to avoid by getting the petition right the first time.
