When a couple who have dependent minor children separates, it may be necessary for one parent to pay the other parent child support.
 
The purpose of child support is to help spread the available resources in order to serve the best interests of the child.  Both parents should be involved in, and should share the responsibility ... and burdens ... of paying for childcare.

Guideline Support

Child support in California is calculated by a computer program.  This is called "guideline support".
 
The court will plug in a number of different pieces of information into the guideline support program.  While there are many factors, the main ones are the number of children, the timeshare to each parent, and the parent's incomes.

A uniformed sheriff's deputy comes to your work and walks up to you.  He hands you some papers and says you have been served with a restraining order.  The hearing is in less than 2 weeks.  You're shocked!!!  You want to oppose the restraining order at the hearing.  What should you do next?

Obey all Restrictions in the Temporary Restraining Order

The papers you were served with usually contain a temporary restraining order that is effective immediately and lasts until the scheduled hearing.  Read through the terms of the restraining order very carefully and make sure to obey all the restrictions.  Failure to obey them could torpedo your chances of successfully opposing a long-term restraining order at the hearing.  It could even lead to your arrest for violation of the order.

The purpose of a divorce is to take one legal entity, a "married couple", and convert it to two legal entities "separate individuals".  In order to complete a divorce case, a number of issues must be resolved.  All divorce cases will involve at least one of these issues, but not every issue may be present in every case.  The issues that must be resolved are:

Child Custody and Visitation

If the couple has minor children, the most important issue will be to determine where the children live, who will care for them, and who will makes decisions for them.  This is known as child custody and visitation.

There are two kinds of custody:  Legal Custody and Physical Custody.