We often have potential clients call and ask what can a divorce cost. The only honest answer to this question is that it depends almost entirely on how reasonable you and your soon to be ex are in terms of reaching an agreement on the terms of the divorce. Ifboth sides can agree on the terms of the divorce in fairly short order thus avoiding having to file motions and court appearances, our firm with our best lawyers for paternity can provide complete representation from $2,000, which represents an estimate of eight associate hours of work. Additionally, you have to pay a filing fee to the Court (currently as of this writing $338 or $269 if your spouse files first). However, if you and your spouse cannot reach agreement over the division of assets, spousal support, child support and custody, the costs of a divorce escalate rapidly. To begin with, you should know about family laws from lawyers, or you can check out Jimeno & Gray, P.A. here. This can help you decide things among yourselves before getting into legal disputes.
Our firm’s approach to representation in a divorce case is to require that our client be reasonable in his or her demands and expectations. If you are looking for a firm that will “win” your divorce, we are not the firm for you. We realize that a divorce is a difficult life event to get through, and it simply is not possible to split what was one family, formerly living and working together as one unit, into two distinct households with double the expenses and to call this a victory. Divorce can be a traumatizing event on the entire family, and our goal is always to limit the pain and suffering and to minimize the financial bleeding. In our opinion, clients need to be wary of attorneys that boast about offering “aggressive” representation in divorce proceedings or that promise to extract every penny possible from the other party. Too often this “aggressive” advocacy benefits no one but the respective attorneys who earn large fees battling over sometimes trivial matters.
The best way to minimize legal costs is to have both parties reach an agreement on the major issues without needing the attorneys negotiate on their behalf. Unfortunately, it is not always possible for the parties to reach such an understanding due to the emotional hurt and often bitterness toward the other spouse that the parties experience while in the throes of a divorce. However, if you can rise above the anger and hurt and come to agreement with your spouse on asset division, child and spousal support, and custody without having to see court intervention during the process, you will save yourselves thousands of dollars in associated legal costs. The first rule in reaching a quick and less costly resolution with your spouse is BE FAIR. Often one party (or sometimes both) is particularly upset with the other, especially if the other spouse has had an affair, and the client wishes to use the divorce process as a means of punishing the offending spouse. Many years ago you had to have a reason to get a divorce, and one of the more popular claims was that the other party committed adultery. In those days, lawyers hired private investigators to catch cheating spouses with their “paramours.” The investigators would trail suspected cheaters to seedy no-tell motels where they would try to take black and white photos of the cheating spouse in the arms of another. If it could be proven that adultery had in fact occurred, not only was that grounds for a divorce, but also the offending spouse might have to forfeit his or her share of marital assets as a punishment for their infidelity. Those days are long gone, and now either spouse can file for a “no-fault” divorce without having to prove anything other than the fact that the marriage is irretrievably broken. The fact that one spouse may have cheated on the other is of no consequence in terms of division of assets. So if you are hoping to limit the costs of your divorce and are bitter because your spouse may have found another, you need to get over it and get on with your life as hard as that might seem to do. A related point is to consider that just because you or your spouse may have strayed even to the point of having an affair, do not instantly assume the marriage is over. Countless marriages have survived such conduct, and you should consider counseling before immediately engaging the services of an attorney to file for divorce. At the very least, counseling may assist the parties in getting past the outrage and thus be able to discuss terms of separation or divorce. In at least some cases, counseling can save an otherwise failing marriage and should not be overlooked as an option.
Divorces get particularly expensive when the parties are fighting over child custody and visitation. Child support, although an important issue in any divorce, is normally resolved fairly easily by utilizing the child support guidelines that have been adopted by the courts here. Once the parties provide their financial info and the amount of time each party will have the children child support can be resolved easily. However, if one spouse is intent in having sole parenting time with the children and wishes to limit or prevent access to the children by their soon to be ex, the cost of a divorce increases greatly. Even more costly is where one party is seeking spousal support (sometimes called “alimony”) from their spouse. Unlike with child support where there are established guidelines, there are no such guidelines for spousal support, and it is virtually impossible for any attorney to reliably predict exactly what any given judge may decide on any given day. There are a wide variety of factors that the court can consider in ordering spousal support, and the court may not weight these factors equally. We advise our clients to be reasonable in what they are seeking if they require spousal support, and to focus more on how much they will need to support themselves post-divorce as opposed to extracting every last dollar from their spouse. The days where a spouse can stay at home and expect to collect one half of their ex-spouse’s earnings for the rest of their life are gone, and most spousal support today is for a defined period to assist the spouse while he or she can find suitable work to support themselves in the future. The shorter the duration of the marriage, the less likely that a court will award long term support. Our goal if our client is seeking spousal support from the other party is to reach agreement and to not leave it up to the court to decide the issue due to the unpredictable nature of the decision.
Anytime either party files a motion the lawyer’s “meters” are running. If you want to avoid unnecessary legal fees, try to reach agreement with your spouse how much money will be needed to keep the bills paid during the time the divorce is pending, and provide those monies to your spouse. Consider this sample illustration of how a typical divorce may proceed.
Husband, the principal breadwinner, moves out of the marital home leaving his soon to be ex-wife with the kids and family dog or cat (apartments don’t like pets). Wife, feeling very insecure and vulnerable, panics, fearing that she will not have money to feed the children and proceeds to clean out every dollar of the joint family accounts. Husband becomes immediately bitter, and refuses to give Wife another penny from his future paychecks. Wife uses the monies withdrawn from the family bank account to pay a large retainer to a lawyer that vows to avenge her honor at Husband’s expense, while Husband signs over his next couple of paychecks as a retainer to his attorney in a vain attempt to avoid paying temporary support and to get back at least half of the money Wife fleeced from the joint accounts, (the money that has already been paid to her attorney). Both sides’ attorneys immediately file initial pleadings including motions for temporary relief and their respective counsel wage war until the advanced fees run out and neither side can pay more, after which the attorneys withdraw from the case (resign with Court’s permission) leaving the parties to either battle pro per (without an attorney), or to borrow the money from a relative for another advanced fee to start the process over again. Many attorneys (I dare say most) will continue the battle as long as their client can keep paying the mounting legal fees which explains why, in many cases, wealthy people pay more to get divorced (they can afford to). From this example, you can see how quickly this scenario can get out of hand.
If you are not an individual that can afford to spend a hundred thousand on a divorce, or even if you can afford it you would like to put the money toward your children’s college fund instead of paying to send your lawyer’s kid to college, try to do the following:
- Make sure a divorce is what you want before consulting an attorney. Often a spouse learns that their significant other cheated on them and the first reaction is to “lawyer up” to protect themselves. Once they see an attorney, he/she signs them up, and the client finds themselves in the throes of a divorce, thus destroying any possibility of reconciliation. It is almost always best to take your time and not rush to an attorney to file for divorce. Family counseling is often a better first step.
- If you do separate, reach agreement with your spouse as to how much money the party with the children most of the time will need to cover all reasonable bills and expenses and provide that money voluntarily so you do not force the other side to go to court for temporary orders.
- Reach agreement as to parenting time (“custody”) and child support. There is a child support calculator available through the County website that can help determine reasonable child support payments. You will find a link to this calculator on our “Resources” page at CarrollLawFirm.com.
- Do not waste money on motions for anything but the most serious matters. In the past, I have received calls from angry clients demanding that I file a motion holding a spouse in contempt for not providing underwear in the children’s overnight bag or to compel the spouse to provide dog food for the family pet. Does it really make sense to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to make your spouse provide underwear or dog food that you can buy for a few dollars at Walmart?
- Do not call your lawyer unless it is important, and when you do, get to the point. Some clients reach for their attorney like a drowning man clings to a life preserver, but at $250-$300 per hour, it is not in your economic interest to call your lawyer five times a day to tell him/her how upset you are with your spouse. If you do not know it at first, you will soon learn that lawyers bill for every call, so it is in your interest to call only when necessary to discuss important issues arise in your case. Hopefully your lawyer is a nice, caring person, but unlike your best friend, they charge for their time.
- Keep track of your lawyer’s bills, and make sure you can afford to pay. In a contested divorce, the case often begins with a flurry of motions and several court appearances. This early activity gets a lawyer’s meter running like an Arizona electric meter on a hot August day. Be aware of what your lawyer is doing for you and what your ongoing balance is. If you spend all of your available funds early on, you may be without an attorney when you run out of funds to pay. Remember too that the fact that your lawyer may not want to take your calls five times a day does not mean you are being ignored, it may mean that your attorney is trying to avoid having you run up your bill.
As a final note, attorneys that handle divorces do not expect to be loved or even appreciated by their clients. Divorces are usually painful and emotional proceedings, and a good attorney can hope that his client ends up with enough to support the family and half of what were formerly marital assets. So it is not likely that many clients will rave about what a good job their divorce attorney did. Our goal at The Carroll Law Firm is to minimize any damage to the family and to achieve the parting of the ways in as economically a manner as possible. No divorce is truly without expense, but at our firm we do our best to avoid wasting your limited family resources.
