California Probate Notice of Hearing–Form DE-120

[Music] As Keith Davidson from Albertson and Davidson in this video I'm going to walk you through how to prepare a notice of hearing so if you have a case in probate court a trust case a will case almost every single case is going to require a notice of hearing once the court sets a hearing date so let's go through what a notice of hearing looks like and how you can fill one in so the first thing I do is I actually just go to Google and I just type in Judicial Council forms and the California Judicial Council actually has a whole bunch of forms that you can use in a lot of different types of lawsuits so we're gonna select the category and we're gonna go down here to probate and decedent's estates and this is where you're gonna find all the forms for not just states like probates but also for trust matters and we'll go ahead and see the forms now I already know that we won't form de 120 but if I didn't know that you could search for a form by name or by number but I know what form we want its form de 120 and here it is in a enlarged format and what this is is this is a form that you use a document that you actually fill out and then mail out to all the related parties in your lawsuit in order to notify them of when a court hearing has been set by the court and the person who files a document with the court is the person who's responsible for notifying everybody else about the court hearing that was assigned by the court so we start off at the top and we're just going to type in our name if you were doing this and you're representing yourself you would just put your own name in here but I'm gonna use mine and then I'm gonna put in my law firm information so if you're a lawyer you'll do that if you're not then you'll just put in your own address and then I'm gonna use the address that I'm at a lot of the time salk Avenue in Carlsbad we have five different offices in California I spend a lot of my time in San Diego County and then you want to make sure you include your telephone number you want the court and the other parties to be able to get a hold of you if they need to do so fax number if you have one you can put in a fax it's optional email is also optional but you really should put one in because there's times when the court might want to get a hold of you and they will use email from time to time and then you're gonna put here who you're the attorney for now if you're not an attorney and you're just appearing on your own behalf you can put oops my typing skills Pro / that just means you're representing yourself the other thing you could do is just put in your own name so my name is Keith Davidson and I'm attorney for Keith Davidson everybody will understand what that means but I'm an attorney so I'm gonna put in the name of my client Bob Smith and then you're gonna put in the county so let's put in Los Angeles County largest county in California we have a lot of cases there although we're in a lot of different counties so whatever County you're in San Diego Santa Clara San Mateo Orange County you just type it in there and then you have to put the street address and the first one is the address for the core is physically located or not or but and on the mailing address yet to put in the courts mailing address now in this case they're the same but sometimes they're not and so if they're not then you'll put in the proper addresses and then here you put the city and the zip code I don't remember the zip code for Los Angeles but you can look it up and you'll put it right there and then you put the branch name so this is the Central courthouse if you don't know the branch name of the court you're dealing with you can look it up on the website and if you can't find one you can just leave that blank now down here you're gonna check a box and it's going to depend on whether you're doing in a state like a probate estate or you're gonna do anything else so a trust matter a conservatorship matter a guardianship matter you're gonna check this box because that's all called in the matter of and then you'll type in what the matter is so let's say we're doing a trust action we'll say the Bob Smith trust that's the matter this was a conservatorship action we'd say in the matter of and then we type in the conservatorship of and then whoever the name of the person is so you can use this very widely for just about any other type of case that's not a probate and then down here you're gonna click the box as to whether it's a decedent meaning a probate estate a trust or everything else so if it's not a probate estate or a trust just click other in this case we're doing a trust action so we're gonna click trusts next you're gonna want to put in your case number so the court knows where to file this once they receive it and I just made up that number but whatever your case number is just put it in there and now this is the part where we really get started in earnest so number one notice is given that and this is the party who filed the document that requires a hearing so in our case Bob Smith is the one giving notice and representative capacity if he were a trustee I would type that in there if he's not if he's just a regular Joe and he's just appearing on his own behalf then leave a blank and then you have to type in what you filed so maybe we did a petition for instructions or a petition for trust contest whatever it is we did just type that in here and that way people will understand what it is you're giving them notice about and then on number three this is where we're going to give the details of the hearing the court will give you the hearing date and you're going to type it in here so November 1 2018 let's say it's 8:30 a.m. oops my typing skills again and Department make sure you put the Department if there's a room number you'll put that if it's not a room number in most cases most courts don't have a room number you just leave that blank and then you have to tell the parties where the address of the court is where the hearings going to be held most of the time you're just gonna check shown above which means this address up here that's where the hearings gonna be held the hearings going to be held somewhere else other than the addresses up here then you'll check this box and you'll specify the address just type it in most the time you're just gonna click shown above so that takes care of the first page of our notice of hearing so we're we're doing we're in good shape so far so now we're gonna go down to the second page and you'll see that the form automatically fills in the name of the matter and the case number so we're good there you're gonna skip over this clerk certificate of posting because you're not ever going to do that instead you're going to go to the proof of service by mail you're gonna have to mail this out and yet this is the whole purpose of this form is to prove that you mailed it out because you're gonna sign this under penalty of perjury which means that if you say something in here that isn't true or if you don't do something that's stated in here then there could be criminal consequences for having perjured yourself so we can't make sure we fill this out right so number two my residence or business address is this is the place where you're conducting the lawsuit out of if you're just doing it on your own you can just put your home address or you can put your work address that that's fine it doesn't matter either one will work people just want to know where they can get a hold of you so I'm gonna put my business address and then we have two options you can either deposit the sealed envelope with the United States Postal Service meaning you're the one who actually puts it into the post box or you can place it into your mailing system at an office so some big companies or big law firms have mailing departments and so even though I'm the one filling out this form I may not be the one who's actually going down to the post office and putting the the mail into the post box in which case I'm gonna click B which is I'm placing it into the mail system that our office has I'm familiar with that system and I know that that system typically requires that anything I put into that mail system is going to be mailed within the ordinary course of business the same day in a sealed envelope with post postage fully prepaid so you have to know that that's what your system does if you're going to check this box otherwise just check a if you're the one taking it down putting it in the mailbox and you be fine you have to put the date it's mailed everybody wants to know what day it was mailed so we'll put October 1st 2018 and again with my typing skills there we go and then we're gonna say where it was mailed so where exactly did you put this into the mail system so that's right here number 5 is kind of interesting so number 5 says that not only did you mail this notice of hearing that we're preparing now but you also sent with it all of the documents referred to in this notice and by that they mean all the documents up here under number one and so it's very good practice in our opinion to do that so when you serve a notice of hearing also send copies of everything you listed up here in number one and that way you won't have any problems nobody can say well I didn't get the documents or or something like that because you have proof that I put the notice of hearing into a sealed envelope along with all of these other documents and so I know that they received them or they should have received them and then you're gonna put the date that you actually signed this form and it doesn't have to be the same day that you mailed it some people say that it really should be you know the next day because that way it's already mailed but usually you're gonna see that it's dated the same day and then you're gonna type in your name here and when you print it out you're gonna sign it over here and again you're signing this under penalty of perjury so if you're saying that you deposited it into the mail on October 1 in Carlsbad California that's got to be right so make sure you do that and then you're gonna put the name and address of every person who received this mailing if you have four or fewer people you can put their name and addresses right here on the form if you have more than that you can use an attachment typically what we do is we'll check the attachment box and then up here we'll actually type see attachment just so everybody is aware that there's an attachment and nobody thinks that we filed a notice of hearing that's blank and even if I have four or fewer people on my notice attachment I still will use an attachment because that way I can keep the name and addresses of the parties and the lawyers on a separate piece of paper separate word document and I can use that on all of my filings so sometimes I have to attach a proof of service to something other than a notice of hearing and I've got that notice list already set up ready to go and so here rather than typing everything in a lot of times we'll just use an attachment so that means I have to actually attach that separate piece of paper to this notice of hearing and I have to mail it out now once you're done you sign this you mail out everything to everybody you also have to file this form with the court and that's why at the top here it looks like something you would file in court so after mailing it you have to take it to the court the court will stamp it over here in this clear area and it'll go into the court file and then when you show up to your hearing the judge is gonna look for this because they want to make sure that everybody receives proper notice before the hearing can commence because the hearing can't take place without notice and if the judge looks in the file and doesn't see this notice of hearing in the file then your hearings gonna get continued because the judge is gonna say I can't hear this matter today because you didn't give proper notice and file proof of giving proper notice with the court so it's not good enough to actually fill out this form and do all of this stuff you have to file this notice of hearing with the court - and then down here you can save the form you can print the form and then once you have it saved you can use it over and over again this is a form that you're gonna use a lot in your case because anytime there's a hearing set you have to mail one of these out and any time a hearing is continued it's very good practice to mail it out as well in court you might hear the attorneys say we waive notice which means that the next hearing can be set and you you're not required to send out this form this notice of hearing but it's still a good idea to do it anyway there's really no downside to giving people notice of a hearing there's only upside which is hey I was just careful as being conservative and I made sure that everybody knew about this hearing so that's how you prepare and file a notice of hearing in your probate court action. 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