"Do it yourself" divorce
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"Do it yourself" divorce
| Mon, 03-07-2005 - 1:07pm |
Has anyone here used one of the do it yourself divorce kit type things? My STBX and I have no children. We earn almost exactly the same and have very few assets to divide. We've agreed on who gets what. He gets one car, I get the other, I am keeping the house.
I just wondered if anyone has experience with these things and if it really is doable. I think I'm pretty smart :-) and I've always done our taxes, even though we had a business at one point. And I don't see a reason to pay two laywers to fight out what we've already agreed to.
Thanks for any input.
Sandy

It sounds like your divorce is the perfect candidate for this type of divorce. I would suggest that you look into having a paralegal type up the paperwork for you. It is always a good idea to buy half an hour of an attorney's time to look over the paperwork before filiing.
Steph
Yes, it sounds like this could work for you.... and I'm agreeing, at the very least, have an attorney review the documents before you sign them just to make sure that everything is up to snuff.
Karen ~ wildlucky4me ~
We have similar circumstances...no kids...agreed on separation of property. We used Complete Case. It asks you all sorts of questions (and some I hadn't thought of like retirement monies). When you are finished, it pulls all the forms together for you and you print them out yourself. It takes the simple answers you give and complies it into the required legalese. The agreement was thorough. They are tailored to each state. The forms are guaranteed to be accepted by your court or your money back.
Complete case filled out the forms...I typed in the dates, printed them out...we signed and had them notarized at our local bank. I went to the courthouse and filed those puppies straightaway. You can also go back and change answers to the questions and then re-run the forms. The night before the final divorce hearing, I decided I wanted my maiden name back (very glad with that decision:). Changed that question online...and Complete Case spit out the Final Decree form a second time with the name change declaration on it. That particular form didn't require the ex's signature (I was the one that filed). I brought it to the final hearing with me the next day and everything went very smoothly.
The way I looked at it...I could bring in an attorney at any time I ran into a problem. The ex never came back and tried to challenge anything so I never saw the need for an attorney. Although I agree with the others that it wouldn't hurt to have an attorney look them over, however expect some of them to poo poo the online process. It takes money out of their pocket.
The only problem I ran into was that there was a small amount of cash the ex still owed me. It's in the agreement that he owes the money, but does not lay out when or how he was to pay it. He told me verbally that he'd pay it up front when the divorce was final. He didn't. I knew that was a posibility before the divorce was final, but an attorney would have cost more than the amount he owed me. I had to ask several times and he's agreed to pay monthly and he's actually sticking to it, so it worked out.
Try and remember to protect yourself after the divorce is final (some things you can start before). Try to close joint credit accounts or if he refuses to close, you can request your name be removed. He actually called and had me removed since he was the primary card holder on the account. We each kept a vehicle. I was never on his auto title (it was his free and clear before we married), but he was on mine and a joint debtor on the loan. I went down and had my car refinanced in my name alone. He had to notarize a statement removing him from the title of the car I was keeping. If you are keeping the house...I believe there is a quit claim deed to remove him from the title after things are final. I ran my credit reports and started fixing things right away. Name changes, credit card accounts. A couple were his and I successfully had them removed from my account. It's been five months and I'm about to run them one more time to make sure everything's been fixed. One of them was quite screwed up.
In all, I think it cost me less than $350 for the complete case fees and my state's filing fees. I'm very pleased that this worked in my particular case and it went very quickly.
Best of luck to you.
Feel free to email me.
Hi there good night,
I had another question for you about using Complete Case. My STBX and I decided
to go that way, and we've filled in all the info and "submitted" it. He called
the courthouse today, and of course
got some lady who was all in a tizzy because we weren't using
lawyers. And she said something about a form I'd need to sign so they wouldn't
"serve" me, since he's the one filing. Does
this make any sense to you? And did the Complete Case program give you this
form anyway?
And once you printed it all out, got it notarized and signed, and then you
"file" them, then what happened? Did either of you have to go to court, or was
it just a matter of days and it was final?
Or what?
I'm a pretty intelligent woman, but this whole process has me feeling like an
idiot!
Thanks for all your help,
Sandy
Hi Sandy,
Yes, complete case produced an "acknowledgment of service" form. The ex had to sign it and have it notarized. It basically says that he's received a copy of the petition. This prevented him from having to be served. I live in Atlanta. They couldn't care less if I had an attorney present or not. I just walked into the county clerk's office, handed the papers over, paid the fee. I brought an extra copy of the papers for him to date stamp. The clerk date stamped everything, assigned a case number and handed a copy back to me and a receipt for the fee. I was then instructed to walk over to the court calender clerk and she assigned a court date right then and there. Georgia only requires a 30 day wait for an uncontested divorce with an agreement. They didn't have a court date available exactly 30 days from the date I filed, so I think I had to wait 6 weeks for the final hearing.
Since I was the one who filed, I was the only one who had to show up at the final hearing. Every one in the court room that morning was requesting an uncontested divorce with an agreement. The two people who had attorneys representing them went first and then the judge explained to the rest of us that the state of Georgia recognizes that we had a right to represent ourselves. He briefly went over what would happen next. I'd say there were probably 10 of us without attorneys. You bring the Final Decree with you to the hearing for the judge to look over and sign. I handed it to his clerk as I went up to take the stand. You get sworn in, then you have to state your name and your spouse's name and what you are desiring (divorce) and that the marriage was broken with no hope of reconciliation. If the judge has no problem with your paperwork, then he will grant the divorce and sign your final decree. I swear it was less than five minutes. At least that's how it worked in Georgia. There was some sort of human resources reporting form that we had to fill out...the judge's clerk gave everyone a copy if they didn't have one.
Then we had to wait for everyone else to finish. The judge's clerk walked us all over to the records department. The county clerk took the reporting form and a copy of our final decree so it could be logged in as official and then you had the option of purchasing additional copies. Then that was it, we were officially divorced. It was over very quickly.
I hope everything works out for you. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help.