Divorcing? 5 Ways to Avoid Enormous Legal Bills

Getting divorced is never easy. But when you have to deal with high legal bills along with everything else it can be scarier than it has to be. We have come up with several ways you can keep your legal costs under control.

1. Can you manage your divorce without a lawyer at all? If you understand the legal consequences and don't need legal advice then it may be that you can represent yourself in getting your divorce. But instead of trying to everything entirely by yourself, there are two fairly cheap sources of help you can turn to.

In most cases spouses are able to work out the terms of their divorce without needing to ask a judge to actually decide anything. These are called uncontested divorces. They still involve a lot of necessary paperwork and court office staff are not able to do it for you or give you detailed help. Some are not even allowed to give you all the forms. But there are other options.

The first is a do-it-yourself divorce kit. This is really a workbook with a lot of fill-in-the-blank type forms. They usually cost between $20 and $40 and you can find them at most bookstores and stationary stores. Expect to spend many hours figuring out how to fill in the forms but you will save a lot of money in the end.

A second way to go is to hire an online service that will take your information, prepare your forms, and email them to you along with specific instructions allowing you to file them at the court office yourself. For a couple of hundred bucks this is far easier than the do it yourself kit and still saves loads of money compared to hiring a lawyer to do it all for you.

2. Try mediating instead of litigating. If you are among the 10% or so who have not been able to agree with your spouse on the terms of your divorce, before your lawyers start scrapping hire a mediator. A mediator is a specialist in assisted negotiation who will help you and your spouse come to an agreement on those touchy issues that you have not been able to resolve on your own. Mediation is successful in resolving the majority of disputes and can change your divorce from a courtroom contest into a far less expensive paper shuffle.

Compared to a divorce trial which you can expect to cost each spouse tens of thousands of dollars, mediation will only cost a few thousand each, possibly even less.

3. Free initial consultations are often offered by lawyers looking for your business. Before booking an appointment with a lawyer make sure the first 30 minutes or so will be free or else call someone else. It may be that after getting some preliminary information you will find that you won't need a lawyer to handle your divorce and you can try one of the cheaper alternatives.

4. You always need to keep in mind that every minute your lawyer works on your case will be added to your bill - at a rate of between $150 to $400 per hour. Think of that every time you are tempted to call for an update or to complain about the latest thing your spouse did to annoy you. Instead, ask for copies of all correspondence to be sent to you and for a regular monthly update. It's almost always better (and cheaper) to make notes and discuss everything with your lawyer at once than contacting him/her about each little thing.

5. Some, but not most, lawyers will agree to bill you a flat fee for your divorce. It won't be cheap but at least it will give you the peace of mind of knowing what the damage is right from the start. If you need to arrange financing it helps to know how much you will need to borrow or set aside. You and your lawyer can then focus exclusively on results.

Article Source: http://www.orbitaloc.com/

Visit our site at Divorce Canada as an example of a divorce document assembly service mentioned in this article. The site also contains hundreds of pages packed with helpful suggestions.

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