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UNCONTESTED DIVORCES:
Meeting with people at my office in Gresham, I have had alot of people ask me to look over papers, or to ask me specific questions about a divorce or custody case where they are representing themselves. I understand that many people distrust lawyers and the courts. I caution anyone about trusting their spouse, however. Also, the courts are not your natural enemy. The Judges can't give you legal advice, but they hate seeing people miserable for years to come as much as I do. There are alot of technical requirements to get a divorce final, which are in place to try and prevent problems later on, but these requirements are not fool proof and don't work if the person meeting them doesn't have experience in dealing with them.
I've made this topic the first one on this page, because it really is the most important. If you continue to represent yourself, all of the advice and concerns I bring up later really don't apply - you will just have to deal with the harsh reality later on. I want you to understand that I am giving you direct information, not some sales pitch. First of all, I love uncontested cases. I like helping people get past this part of their life. It's nice dealing with people at the beginning, when they are so nice to each other. I don't like getting that call from you, though, a year or so later, when you have been served with a motion to modify the judgment, or when you realize that despite what you thought, there is a disagreement about this or that, and that you need to now fix a problem that never should have been allowed to exist. People are always happy to give up stuff to get out of an uncomfortable situation, or to "move on." It's after it's settled down though, that people start thinking about stuff, maybe getting resentful about what they gave up. If that person is your former spouse, be ready to get back in the ring.
If you are thinking of representing yourself, take some free advice and read the following (when I use the phrase "former spouse," it is ususally applicable to a former partner, or person with whom you share a child):
In a divorce case where you and your spouse have agreed on all of the necessary terms, I can get the paperwork done and a Judgment submitted to the Judge within a few days. Depending on the county, it can take from a few days to a few weeks for the Judge to sign and the Judgment entered. Many counties require parents in divoces involving children to complete a parent education class before the case is final. In some counties, like Multnomah, it's just a one time session for a few hours. If you live in Gresham, you don't have to travel far to see me - I'm at 501 NE Hood, Suite 260, in downtown Gresham.
In an uncontested case, I typically charge a $1,000 retainer. In case you are thinking, "I can just fill the papers out myself, and I will save $1,000," I suggest you read the following:
WHY YOU SHOULD NOT REPRESENT YOURSELF:
Filling out papers and signing them sounds easy doesn't it? If that was all there was to it, I wouldn't be representing so many people years after they finalized a divorce themselves, and had the intial Judgment entered.
Let me give you a common scenerio: you and your spouse fill out the papers. The Court clerk usually has to send them back to you a few times before they make it to a Judge, but forget that, that's just your time and energy, so let's assume a Judge signed it. Now the Judge can't give you legal advice, so he or she is not going to inform you that the Judgment doesn't provide for certain things, or that you are really cheating yourself and your kids out of what you and they are entitled to.
You are just happy to get it over with. Everything will calm down and everyone will get along once the emotional turmoil has settled down, won't it? It's worth giving up a marital share of the 401k, or some of the child support, after all, he promised to help out and pay for piano lessons.
Your former spouse gets involved with a new person. She doesn't think he should have to pay you so much support, or she thinks that he should have the kids overnight more. Maybe she has your kids call her "mom." Remember, everything she knows about you is based on what your former spouse told her. He couldn't possibly have done anything wrong to cause your marriage to end, because he is so nice (remember when you thought that?).
Or, an alternative scenerio: she's a great mom. Even though you only agreed to every other weekend parenting time, after living with your kids their whole life, you know she will always let you see them. Even though you two couldn't agree on where to go to dinner, I'm sure you'll never disagree about your kids. At first it's okay, you move a mile away and walk your kids to school every day. You're the scout leader for your son's cub scout troop. You figure you will go their games and so forth forever. You even take off on your lunch break and go to your kid's school to have lunch with him once a month.
Now, she meets this guy who lives in, oh, maybe Forest Grove. Of course the kids move with her, right? What happens to your parenting time? Besides losing hours of the precious time you have with your kids, who see you less and less over time, you can't just run out to Forest Grove during your lunch break, can you? How do you make the cub scout meetings? How do you be the dad you once were?
Okay, one last scenerio (I have to stop at some point): you are fairly young, say, early 30's, and still physically attractive to alot of guys. You understandably want to get past this time in your life and be single again. You want this over with fast because you don't want to have to tell some guy that you meet and like that you are still married. Your husband knows this and uses this urgency against you. He tells you that if you don't agree to give up your share of his retirement plan, or to not insist on spousal support, or don't give him joint custody, or agree to something else ridiculous that he has no chance of prevaling on in front of a Judge, that he will "fight" this divorce and spend thousands of dollars, thus costing you tons of money and stress in the process.
I wish I had a dollar for every nice young woman that told me that "he will do it - his parents have alot of money," or "he is really manipulative," or "he is really convincing." One thing I have learned from the inside of divorce cases is the power of the all-mighty dollar. When this guy meets with an attorney, and tells him that he wants to fight you for everything, including custody, that attorney will require at least a $5,000 retainer up front and later ask for another $10,000 prior to trial. Don't forget to throw in at least $2,000 for a private custody evaluation. How do I know this? Because sometimes I'm that attorney. When your spouse is the one who calls me, I also explain to him that the Judge will probably award attorney fees to you against him at the end of the trial.
The bottom line: it won't happen. If you hire me or another qualified attorney to draft the papers and make sure you are protected, your divorce might take a little longer to finalize, but you and your kids will benefit for your lifetimes.
This is because someone's principles usually submit to their wallet, and because a Judge who has tried family law cases for years has probably dealt with "manipulative" and "convincing" people before. I especially love the one where the guy suddenly gets less overtime hours, right before he has to start paying child support. Do you think no one else thought of that before? In a different situation you would see right through some of this stuff - but all of the emotions disorient your judgment, and then add to that the fact that you have no idea as to what you should or should not agree to, and you are vulnerable to this kind of pressure.
This stuff may be hard to hear, but I would rather hurt a client's feelings then see them suffer for years. And believe me, if you do a divorce pro se, especially if you have kids, you will probably suffer for a lifetime.
When you two talked about doing the divorce yourself, and keeping the lawyers out of it, everything seemed so agreeable and "uncontested." Often times your spouse was so agreeable because they met with an attorney like me, who after hearing about how much they were getting from you - or not giving to you - probably told him to sign before you changed your mind.
Sometimes the two of you both do honestly each have good intentions, but your lack of foresight manifests itself when your former spouse meets someone who thinks their new partner got a raw deal. Maybe the new person is resentful because your former spouse gives you too much, or doesn't get enough, child or spousal support. Remember, this person is now sharing household expenses with your former spouse, which makes it personal - the money he or she is paying is coming out of their budget. Maybe this new person thinks that your kids should know what a terrible person you are. Maybe they look at that Judgment that you two scribbled together, and having been through this before they take it to their attorney (like you should have done the first time), and afterwards decide that some of the judgment terms should be modified, or that something that is not really required in the judgment should be required, or that something that is required (but that you and your former spouse agreed to informally change) should be enforced. Or maybe you find out there was some asset out there that your former spouse did not disclose to you. Did you protect yourself by following the discovery demand procedures, which would then later allow you to re-open the case and claim your spousal share of that asset? I doubt it. Maybe it was there and now it's been drained, do you think you're going to get it back? An attorney would have ensured you weren't missing anything.
That's when I get the call. I will tell you that it will cost you more, and that at this stage you have less chance of getting what you want, because it is harder to modify or change something after it's been finalized in a Judgment, then it is to make sure you get it in the original case. If you are the one defending the motion, it will cost you money and stress. It isn't exactly good for your kids either. Oh, and the retainer will be more then $1,000. I could be less honest I suppose, and tell you to call and meet with me before I quote the retainer, but I want to start our relationship by dealing with reality.
Many of my clients hire me after their divorce was done on their own. Many of them are repeat clients. They are usually very nice people who live in constant turmoil. Don't be one of them.
A divorce is not something you do by just filling out some papers. There are so many factors and variables that interlate with each other, that you cannot quickly grasp the impact of what you are doing by looking at only the Oregon Revised Statutes, or the Oregon Administrative Rules, Uniform Trial Court Rules, Supplemental Local Rules, not to mention the case law decisions from the Oregon Supreme Court and Court of Appeals (and Federal Court). These legal authorities affect important life altering elements of divorces, and they work together. Trying to look up one specific rule to figure out how to fill in a blank line on a piece of paper is like gutting the frame of your house without paying attention to where the load bearing walls are, or like performing surgery on someone without paying attention to their vital signs, or in this case like performing the surgery on yourself.
Many things happen after a divorce is "final," including changes in beneficiary designations, health insurance, life insurance, rights of parents regarding medical decisions and school, military benefits including a former spouse's right to health insurance, parenting time rights, tax dependency exemption rights, and money awards, to name a few, that must be provided for correctly in the Judgment for you to be able to enforce your rights and protect yourself and your kids. For example, what if your former spouse makes no money, but she has the kids and according to the IRS can claim them as dependents, even though she benefits very little from it. How do you handle that? Believe me, you will pay more then $1000 to try and fix this stuff later on.
I want clients who are ready to face reality. I say that not because I lack compassion or empathy, but because I want to do everything I can for my clients, and if they don't live in reality it really limits my ability to help them. I don't forget a client when I close the file. I don't like to think of a client having suffered. I don't leave my work at the office. I worry alot, and if I do a better job because of it, the lost sleep and stress is worth it. Divorce is a major life event, that if reality is ignored, it will come back to haunt you later on, and on and on again. Reality has to be faced now, not later, or the reality you enter will be much worse.. |
