Prenup attorney in Murrieta

Where a Murrieta couple gets the marriage license

Riverside County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder, 41002 County Center Drive, Suite 230, Temecula. That is the Temecula office.

The county issues the same license at each of these offices: Riverside Gateway, 2724 Gateway Drive, Riverside, CA 92507; Riverside Downtown, 4080 Lemon Street, 1st Floor, Riverside, CA 92501; Palm Desert, 38-686 El Cerrito Road, Palm Desert, CA 92211; Hemet, 880 North State Street, Suite B-6, Hemet, CA 92543; Temecula, 41002 County Center Drive, Suite 230, Temecula, CA 92591; Blythe, 270 North Broadway, Blythe, CA 92225, Tuesday and Thursday only. 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 Murrieta family case is usually heard

Menifee Justice Center, 27401 Menifee Center Drive, Menifee, CA 92584. It serves the mid-county region of Riverside County for family law.

Not in Murrieta. Since July 8, 2024, the court’s order sends Murrieta family law filings to the Menifee Justice Center, north of the city in Menifee.

Riverside County hears family law in four places

The court’s administrative order on where to file family law documents, effective July 8, 2024, divides the county four ways: the Riverside Family Law Courthouse, 4175 Main Street, Riverside, for the western region; the Menifee Justice Center, 27401 Menifee Center Drive, Menifee, for the mid-county region, which includes Murrieta, Temecula, Hemet and Lake Elsinore; the Larson Justice Center, 46-200 Oasis Street, Indio, for the desert region, which includes Palm Springs and Palm Desert; and the Blythe Court, 265 North Broadway, Blythe.

Which one a case belongs to turns on where the parties live, which is why this page names one rather than leaving it open.

Nothing is filed when an agreement is made. The courthouse matters only if the agreement is ever disputed.

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 Murrieta 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)