Okay everybody welcome to page one of the FL-150 Income and Expense declaration form. So
as I explained in the intro video, this form is used a lot in family cases all throughout
California and I've noticed that a lot of unrepresented people -- people without lawyers --
oftentimes struggle when they have to fill this form out. So hopefully this video, you know, this
series of videos, this playlist rather, will help alleviate some of that confusion. So the best
thing or the best way to do this, I think, is to tackle this page in chunks. So this first chunk up
here should look fairly familiar to you if you've seen a lot of court forms recently either on this
current case that you're working on or on prior cases. So the idea, though, is that over here you
have to put down the attorney's name, address, phone number, email address, etc. or, you know, if the party
doesn't have an attorney like, you know, if you're the one filling this out and you don't have an
attorney, then you have to put down your name, phone number, email address, mailing address, etc. So in
this second box right here where it says Superior Court of California County of blank. Last I checked,
California doesn't have a county of blank so you got to put something here. So within the
county that you're in -- San Bernardino, Sacramento, whatever -- there's going to be a courthouse where
your case is and that courthouse has a mailing address. That could be the street address or it
could be like a P.O. Box. I've seen that before also, but in my experience as long as you have a mailing
address of some kind here that can identify the courthouse that you're in that's sufficient. So
moving on then, down here you actually put the, you know, names of the parties. So instead of plaintiff
and defendant, a lot of times it's petitioner and respondent. So go ahead and put those names
down. Where it says other parent or claimant, that doesn't apply in every case and most of
the time when I see somebody, you know, listed here under other, it's usually the County Department of
Child Support Services. So I have another video, which I'm going to link right over here, that goes
over kind of a primer, I guess, a basic kind of, you know, short version about how child support
in California works and go ahead and take a look at that if, you know, child support is a
concern of yours. So that said, over here the last thing in this kind of highlighted portion right
here is the case number. So you gotta put that down and this next kind of chunk right here, oops, that.
So the income and expense declaration as you can probably guess from the name, goes over
income and expenses for the person filling the form out. So the court wants to know how much you
make and how much you spend. So this first box that I've highlighted here, this first kind of
area I guess, goes over employment information. So, for example, who you work for, where the employer
is, what their phone number is, what occupation you have, as well as, you know, when you started working,
uh, how many hours a week you work, and how much you get paid. If, for example, you are unemployed
at the moment, you can go ahead and fill this section out also. It actually says right here if
you are unemployed, list out your most recent job. If you are unemployed, the one thing that you
make sure that you have to do is, oops, for (f) right here where it says "if unemployed, date job ended,"
you have to fill that out. So the court knows that the job you're describing is not a current one.
Regardless of whatever it is that you put down for, you know, this, this section, you have to pay
attention to this box right here. So regardless of what it is that you put down in terms of the
number of hours you work for each pay period or week or whatever or how much you get paid for
each month, week, hour, piece, whatever, you know, the pay scale in your job is, you have to attach pay
stubs because, well two pay stubs rather. Because if you don't, then, you can probably imagine that a
lot of people will purposely understate their income. They'll say, for example, that they only
make minimum wage when they in fact make $80 an hour and, you know, they work five hours a week,
you know, that's what they'll say when in reality they're working 65. So to prevent kind of,
you know, trickery or fraud, whatever you want to call it, the courts require that you actually
make attach, er, include attachments, I guess, to the FL-150 form whenever you submit one. And a
lot of times from my experience, the attachments are actually more important than the declaration
themselves because the declaration, even though it's a declaration, a lot of times people don't
fill it out properly or they, you know, purposely leave stuff out, etc. Pay stubs are a lot harder
to kind of fake, I suppose, if that's the right term. So anyway, if you have a second job, you
know some people do. So you have to go ahead and provide the same information employment, employer
name, address, salary, hours, etc. for those jobs as well and you can just use another piece of paper
to do that. So section two right here is, should be self-explanatory. It's a lot of biographical
stuff. So they want to know how old you are, what education you have, if it's, you know, high school,
college, graduate school, if you have vocational training. And if you do have college or graduate
school, they want to know what kind of degrees you obtained. A lot of times people, you know, go to
college for a year or two and then they drop out. That's fine. No big deal, but they have to put down,
say, two years of college, but then they would leave the degree field blank. Number three, oops, right
here, this is tax information. So, I mean, it should be fair, fairly self-explanatory as well. They want
to know what was the last year you filed taxes, your filing status at the time, where you filed
taxes and how many exemptions you're claiming for yourself. Number four here, this is the, I guess, the
person's best guess as to what the other, you know, person in the case makes in terms of gross monthly
income. So, for example, if this is a divorce case where you're filling this FL-150 out, you, and let's
say that you're the wife in the case, you have to make a, well you don't have to, you know, if you know
and you can make a best guess as to what your ex, or soon-to-be ex-husband, or soon-to-be ex-wife
is making, you should put that down here and -- actually, you should put it down right there --
and include a kind of estimate or reason why you know that. So, for example, let's say that during the
course of the marriage, you handled all of the financial stuff in the relationship or, you know,
you have their joint tax return from last year and their job hasn't changed, so that's how you know,
or you're guessing that their income has stayed the same. And the last part for page one here is
actually probably the most important part to the entire form, aside from the attachments like I
mentioned earlier, is, it's the signature block. So if you're filling this form out for yourself, after
you fill out all the pages, go ahead and sign this right over here on the right, print your
name over here, and date it right there and that's what makes this form, I guess, legal, I suppose, if
that's the right word. Because by signing, you're declaring under penalty of perjury that all the
stuff you've mentioned in this form is correct. So that's a fairly big deal. Make sure that you
don't lie or misrepresent anything in this form, because if you do, and it's under penalty
of perjury, that could cause you problems later on. So hopefully that helped. Page number one is
actually not so bad. Page two, which I'll describe in a subsequent video in this playlist, this is
where, in my experience, a lot of people will get slightly intimidated. It's actually not
so bad. I'll go over it, but yeah. So anyway, hope that was clear and let's go on to page number two.