Uncontested Divorce = Online Divorce
Online divorce is made for uncontested divorce. If you are fortunate enough to have an uncontested divorce, online divorce is a wise choice.
An uncontested California divorce is a divorce where the parties are in agreement and will not dispute any legal issue in the divorce AND
- there is not a very large marital estate (you are not very wealthy)
- there are no complex legal issues, e.g. there is no interest in an active business or a special needs child who may need lifetime support (there are many other examples of complex legal issues)
- there is no domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence.
Avoid Unlicensed Online Divorce Mills Outside California
The whole point of online divorce in California is to reduce stress and keep your cost down.
However, if you pay $300-$450 to an unregulated non-lawyer online divorce mill (mostly out-of-state) and you end up paying for their mistakes forever, that’s NOT a cheap divorce.
Just look at the Better Business Bureau or TrustPilot pages of any non-California divorce mill. Hire one of these outfits and you are on your own. That is high stress divorce. Don’t do it!
Avoid Very Expensive Non-Lawyer Document Assistants Fronted by Hot-Shot Hollywood Lawyers
These include Hello Divorce, divorce.com and AIdivorce.legal. These have
$275-$500 “get-em-in-the-door” packages. Then the aggressive up-selling begins.
For Hello Divorce’s $400 teaser package, no one reviews your documents before they are filed at court. For AI Divorce’s $275 teaser package, it only covers the first batch of divorce documents. There are three batches in almost all California divorces.
Avoid Traditional Divorce Lawyer Churners and Grinders
Traditional California divorce lawyers want to charge you a $5000-$7500+ retainer fee. Then they will burn up that retainer as fast as possible to get you onto the $300-$450 billable hour treadmill.
That’s because they don’t know what else to do. Churning through client money is the only thing traditional California divorce lawyers have ever done. Don’t fall for it if you have an uncontested divorce.
Very few California divorce lawyers have been among the competitive and savvy divorce lawyers who have adopted online divorce as either as an additional service offering or their only service offering.
Traditional lawyers will trick you into hiring them by scaring the crap out of you on some issue that MIGHT happen in your case but almost certainly won’t.
Then, when they’ve got your money, you have to disclose your assets and debts to them as part of the California divorce disclosure process. So they know EXACTLY what cash and assets you’ve got as well as your credit card balances.
All they need to do from that point is churn. Requests for Orders, Discovery Requests, Discovery Responses, Hearings, Interrogatories, Postponements, Trial Briefs, etc., etc. until your cash and assets are gone.
If your spouse has a lawyer too, the 2 lawyers will do their dance until neither one of you has cash or credit left. Then they’ll recommend that you settle your case and tell you what a great job they did.
Don’t fall for this nonsense. There are times when you will need a full representation lawyer (and if your simple uncontested blows up, you will need full representation), but not in a simple uncontested California divorce.
And guess what! If your case blows up into a contested case, you already have a local divorce lawyer who knows your case on your team!
Avoid unnecessary and dishonest lawyer churners. They will overcharge you by at least 4X. Make the lawyer fit your case. Don’t make your case fit the lawyer’s BMW payments. Know your cost up front.
Get the Best of Both Worlds
California uncontested divorce consumers now have another option.
Hire a savvy, competitive local California Online Divorce Lawyer. Protect your legal and economic interests. Protect yourself from the high risks of unregulated online divorce mills and dishonest traditional divorce lawyer churners.
You get all of the protection of using a California Online Divorce Lawyer at a fraction of the price of the dishonest traditional divorce lawyer churners.
And if any problem does arise, or even if your uncontested case completely blows up (very few of them do), you already have a California divorce lawyer on your team. S/he already knows your case.
You will only use your California divorce lawyer when you need your California divorce lawyer. And you only pay for services you need. You do not automatically overpay just because something MIGHT go wrong.