Legal Question in Family Law in California

Filing a petition for dissolution of marriage should have no affect on the child support proceedings.

If you serve your husband with the Summons and Petition he will have 30 days to serve and file a Response. If he does not serve and file the Response you can proceed to obtain a default judgment. Most likely, the county will become involved in the process to asist you in collecting child support payments and amounts that it has paid to you from him.

If he ignores divorce papers, your divorce will go by way of default. The simplest way of explaining this is that you do all of the paperwork and filing, and eventually your divorce will be granted on your terms, so long as they fit within the law. Default judgments can be a little tricky, so be sure to work with your county's family law facilitator and consider retaining an attorney to assist you. If it's truly a default judgment, your attorney fees should be pretty reasonable.