Prenup attorney in Burbank

Where a Burbank couple gets the marriage license

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, 14340 West Sylvan Street, Van Nuys. That is the Van Nuys office.

The county issues the same license at each of these offices: Norwalk, 12400 Imperial Highway, Norwalk; Beverly Hills, 9355 Burton Way, 4th Floor, Beverly Hills; East Los Angeles, 4716 East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, Building C, Los Angeles; Lancaster, 44509 16th Street West, Suite 101, Lancaster; LAX/Courthouse, 11701 South La Cienega Boulevard, 6th Floor, Los Angeles; Van Nuys, 14340 West Sylvan Street, Van Nuys; Florence/Firestone, 7807 Compton Avenue, 1st Floor, Room 102, Los Angeles. A license is a county document rather than a city one, so any of them will do: choose by where you are and which has an appointment sooner.

Both of you go in person, with identification, and the license is issued the same day. It is valid for ninety days, so there is no advantage in getting it early, and no relationship between the license and the agreement: neither depends on the other and they are handled by different people at different times.

Where a Burbank family case is usually heard

Pasadena Courthouse, 300 East Walnut Street, Pasadena. It serves the Northeast District.

Not in Burbank. Family law for Burbank residents is heard at the Pasadena Courthouse, in the court’s Northeast District, a few miles east. This office is in Burbank, on West Olive Avenue.

Why Los Angeles County has several family law courthouses

Most California counties hear family law in one building. Los Angeles County hears it in several, among them Stanley Mosk downtown and the courthouses at Pasadena, Long Beach, Torrance, Compton, Whittier, Pomona South, Van Nuys, Chatsworth and the Antelope Valley.

They are organized into districts, and which district a case belongs to turns on where the parties live rather than on where they married or where a lawyer is. That is why two couples a few miles apart can end up in different buildings.

For somebody making an agreement the practical effect is small, because nothing is filed when an agreement is made. It matters if the agreement is ever disputed, and it is the reason this page names a particular courthouse instead of "the Los Angeles court".

A premarital agreement is not filed with any court

Naming a courthouse on this page invites an obvious question, so here is the answer: nothing is filed. A premarital agreement is a private document between two people. It is not filed with any court, and no judge sees it when it is made.

The courthouse matters for one reason only. If the agreement is ever disputed, that dispute happens in a dissolution, and the dissolution is heard there. Knowing which building that is tells you whose procedures would apply and where the papers would go, years from now, in a situation nobody is planning for.

The practical consequence is that there is no filing fee, no queue and no waiting on a court for anything. What takes the time is the periods before signing, not any court.

What you would actually do

Nothing in a Burbank matter requires you to come to an office. The whole matter runs through your own portal: you answer the questions about what you own and what you owe, the schedules are prepared and served, the agreement is drafted and served, the periods run, and the signing opens when they have.

This office is in Burbank. Clients across California are acted for the same way, and where you live changes the license office and the courthouse named above and nothing else about how a matter is run.

The two things worth knowing before you start are that the fee is flat and quoted before anything begins, and that nothing is charged until the fee agreement has been read and signed.

This office quotes a flat fee before any work begins, and the written fee agreement states what it covers, when each part is earned, and your right to a refund of anything not earned.

The requirements do not change from city to city

Nothing about what has to happen before signing varies by city. It is the same in Los Angeles as in Bakersfield, and it is set out in full on the pages linked below rather than repeated here.

Two are worth naming because they decide the timetable more than anything else. There is a period before signing, counted in calendar days, and there is a second one attached to the written advice to seek independent counsel. Where they start on different days, the later of them governs.

On an agreement signed on or after 1 January 2020, at least seven calendar days must pass between the day a party is first given the final agreement and the day that party signs it, whether or not that party has a lawyer. Fam. Code, § 1615, subd. (c)(2)(B)

A premarital agreement is not treated as signed voluntarily unless the party against whom it is later asserted was represented by their own independent lawyer when they signed, or was advised to seek one and expressly waived that right in a separate signed writing. Fam. Code, § 1615, subd. (c)(1)