How To Avoid High Attorney Costs In Divorce
Find out about 3 ways you can avoid the costly litigation that that traditional divorces incurred. Instead of incurring fees around $18000 per spouse (that’s right!), you find out how to take advantage of modern processes that slash your divorce costs.
Understanding Marriage Law
Marriage law refers to the set of legal requirements and specifications that govern how marriage is to be initiated, how it is to be continued, and what makes a marriage valid. And with divorce rates soaring higher than ever before, probably most important is that marriage law also encompasses legal ways to dissolve this type of union. Marriage law is a vast topic, that’s for sure.
Individual states rather than the Federal government determine marriage law and this article offers a general overview so if you are looking to begin or end a marriage, you need to consult with your state government to get more information about the specific state requirements.
How To Get Legally Married
Initiating a marriage generally does not involve much more than completing a license application (which typically both the bride and groom-to-be sign and you’ll need to take proof of identity such as drivers license or birth certificate), paying a fee (which ranges from $4 - $90 depending upon your state) and sometimes, getting a blood test.
To get married in the United States, you require a marriage license; you cannot be legally married without one. A marriage license is permission from a legal authority (the state) for the marriage of two people to be performed.
To get a marriage license, you need to lodge a license application in your town/city/county clerk’s office and there may be a waiting period of up to 6 days before you receive your license depending on your state.
Once you have your license, you are free to marry and, at the completion of your marriage ceremony, both the bride and groom and the Officiant sign the marriage license (some states require a witness) which is then filed to produce a certified copy and marriage certificate.
Most states require that the person getting married is at least 18 years of age (Mississippi and Nebraska are both exceptions to this rule at the time of writing this article) and charges for a license vary from $4 - $90 depending on your state.
Ending Your Marriage: Should You Hire a Marriage Attorney?
If you have a completed agreement that is acceptable to the court, the judicial process is fairly easy. However, if your case is filed before it is settled, the judicial process can be long, expensive and emotionally devastating.
Life after marriage can become extremely complex which is why many people choose to enlist the help of a marriage attorney during their divorce proceedings. However, marriage law does not require that someone petitioning for divorce be represented by a marriage attorney. In other words, you get to choose whether or not you will have a marriage attorney help you through your divorce proceedings.
Most often, those who chose self-representation are those whose divorces will not be contested and who do not have substantial assets or any children. Self-representation however, is not without risk.
Regardless of your personal situation, it’s still advisable to consider hiring a marriage attorney who is experienced in divorce and/or family law. Hiring a marriage attorney will cost money, (money you may not have) but doing so may make the process easier and hopefully faster and more equitable, too.
What can a marriage attorney do for you?
Marriage and its dissolution are both legal issues and the supporting marriage law is vast. Even if you’re unfamiliar with marriage law you probably can handle the simple matters like filling out forms and paying application fees.
But if you are not fully aware of your rights and/or your obligations, you might inadvertently agree to something that is not in your best interests or that of your spouse. What’s worse, you might even forget to (or fail to realize that you should) deal with some really important issue.
A marriage attorney who has years of experience in divorce proceedings isn’t likely to make these types of mistakes and oversights. And that’s good because everything that you agree to in your divorce will affect you in some way for the rest of your life. The job of a marriage attorney then is to see that those agreements affect you positively, not negatively.
When you think about a marriage attorney as someone who can help protect you and your future, the price he or she charges doesn’t seem so high after all!
How To End Your Marriage Without Costly Litigation
Marriage dissolution is much more complex – it’s much easier to get married than divorced, that’s for sure. Not only have two people come together in marriage, during that time together they have purchased assets, incurred debt, generated income, and they possibly have had children. Marriage law as it pertains to divorce covers all these areas and more.
If your marriage has reached the point where you are seeking divorce (or a dissolution of your marriage), there are a number of legal options open to you. This article provides an overview of these options.
Collaborative Law and Divorce
As more and more families shy from the crippling expense of taking each other to court for prolonged litigation battles, they seek to use less adversarial ways of separating or divorcing.
One such way is known as collaborative practice or collaborative law. Collaborative law aims to offer couples a no-court alternative by offering an alternative dispute resolution process whereby both partners agree not to litigate.
The collaborative process, which includes spouses and their attorneys (as well as any other professionals working with the family), provides many benefits (apart from dramatically reducing the financial cost of divorce) such as giving children a voice in the divorce, focusing your legal team on the law rather than the trauma, and providing a solid basis for a healthy post-divorce relationship.
Unlike a traditional divorce, collaborative law allows you to retain a team of divorce professionals such as a divorce attorney, financial and mental health professionals or a divorce coach.
Either professional has a different role in the process in terms of the advice and support they provide. The divorce attorney will advise you with respect to the family law in your particular state and together with your partner’s attorney they draft the settlement for your family.
A good financial advisor will discuss with you the short and long-term financial aspects of your divorce which might include immediate costs, division of assets and liabilities, alimony or child support and tax implications of divorce.
Mental health professionals include therapists, psychologists and family counselors that are trained to help you to develop strategies to cope with the emotional and mental strain of the divorce process, while a divorce coach provides techniques and emotional support for dealing with your divorce.
Divorce Mediation
Like the collaborative law alternative, divorce mediation seeks to reach agreement with the parties and avoid costly litigation.
A mediator is like a referee, their job is to provide neutral third party who is there to ensure fair play and to help you and your partner to reach agreement on key areas including property division, alimony and matters relating to children (visitation, child support and custody).
As with the collaborative process, both partners can engage a team of legal and other professionals to assist with the process, and their team members can be present during mediation sessions.
Once the mediation is completed (and this typically takes a number of sessions), the mediator develops a settlement agreement for your family. Divorce mediators tend to have backgrounds in either divorce law (such as attorneys) or as mental health professionals working with family issues.
Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Divorce
DIY Divorce doesn’t need an attorney but will require you to investigate your state specific requirements and ensure beforehand that your situation is suitable for DIY divorcing.
If you are in agreement on all the issues, believe that both partners have been honest about disclosing assets and income, and you both believe that the settlement is fair and reasonable you might consider using the DIY model.
To do it yourself, you need to purchase a state-specific book (if available) that explains the requirements of your particular state.
You can try http://www.divorcelawinfo.com/ or search the internet for information for your state. Books that say they apply to all 50 states may not include the specific state information you will need.
After this, if you are confident that you can complete your own forms, you can purchase the forms you need at www.uslegalforms.com.
If you aren’t confident about completing the forms on your own, you can choose to engage someone to help such as www.completecase.com which offers customized state-specific support, and help to complete the forms.
DIY divorces rely on both partners agreeing and if agreement cannot be reached, DIY may not be suitable. In the event that agreement cannot be reached, you might consider mediation or collaboration instead.
Understanding Marriage Law: Final Thoughts
The law is very complex, and changes are frequent as new precedents are set in the courts. Once upon a time, to get divorced meant extremely costly litigation but, as more and more people shy away from incurring these costs, good alternatives have emerged that offer plenty of benefits to those families that choose to use them.
For instance, collaboration and mediation significantly reduce the costs of divorce and they provide a solid foundation that ensures you have the basis of creating a healthy relationship with your former partner once the divorce is finalized.
The processes are designed to help you focus on solutions by negotiating with each other, and they offer children a voice in the process too.
Of course, there are some cases where divorce will not be settled amicably, agreement cannot be reached and such is the extent of the acrimony between former partners that litigation is inevitable.
In this environment, you will need to engage a good experienced attorney, and you will need to expect that your legal costs will be significant.
Fiona Mackenzie is the author of How To Know: When To Separate, a practical eBook that deals with the relationship topic of how to know when it is over. How To Know: When To Separate includes tips, strategies and techniques used by the author to manage the end of her relationship and learn how to be happy once more.
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