Online Divorce Lawyer FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

You don’t need anyone to help you find a lawyer to handle your divorce. Lawyers are a dime a dozen. You can find them anywhere. Most of them will claim that they can handle divorce. If they charge a high enough retainer fee, many consumers will think that they are very good and experienced.

You can literally hire any divorce lawyer by spinning the roulette wheel on Google Business Profile, Google Screened, Avvo or any other mass-lawyer finder. It’s a crapshoot. You never know what you will get because they are all required to look the same on those platforms..

But we suggest that it would be a REAL good idea to use Online Divorce Lawyer’s free service that hooks you up with an experienced, cost-effective, local Online Divorce Lawyer to handle your uncontested divorce. We’re talking about a local divorce lawyer who actually handles REAL online divorce.

And think about it. Lawyers who handle a lot of uncontested divorce tend to be better at it than their colleagues who don’t.

Online divorce is a wise choice for an uncontested divorce. However, almost no California lawyers offer REAL online divorce. For most traditional California divorce lawyers, in a battle between your future legal and financial interests and that lawyer’s income, you lose every time.

The online divorce industry is a swamp. Up until now, it has been unregulated, unlicensed and un-accountable. Up until now, most of it has been out-of-state.  Some of it is in India, Ukraine or Mexico. Until Online Divorce Lawyer, your hiring decision would be tricky and dangerous.

Online Divorce Lawyer is a convenient safe gateway to a local LICENSED online divorce lawyer who will save you from the high risk of hiring an unqualified online divorce mill.  It is likely that you are only aware of this Best of Both Worlds possibility because of Online Divorce Lawyer.

You now have other options. You don’t have to hire a high-risk unqualified online outfit for $300-$1100 and pay for their mistakes forever.

And you also certainly don’t have to hire a traditional local divorce lawyer in your town on a full-representation basis and pay him or her $7500-$10000+ for services you don’t need in your simple uncontested case.

Not all divorce lawyers have the competitive edge to be an Online Divorce Lawyer. We hope that you will reward those who have demonstrated their  competitiveness.

Regrettably, yes.  

Divorce is a business that went online easily and as early as 1999.

Because the online divorce mill could be anywhere in the world and because your state’s laws and consumer fraud regulations don’t apply to them if they are outside your state, they came to realize that they can do almost anything they want to you and your case. You have very little, if any, chance to resolve most frauds that arise.

See a good overview of the rampant fraud from unqualified unlicensed online divorce mills.

Also, see the Online Divorce Association of America which has been trying unsuccessfully to get unlicensed online divorce mills to agree to a basic Code of Ethics. They won’t.

When the con-men in the unlicensed divorce mill business see any attempt to name and shame them, all they do is put up another 2 or 3 so-called “online divorce review” sites, which are owned by the divorce mill they recommend.  As a result, unsuspecting divorce consumers are tricked into hiring what they think is a reputable online divorce company.

Until Online Divorce Lawyer launched, the online divorce industry was completely unregulated, unlicensed  and dangerous to the legal and economic health of the California divorce consumer.

You now have a Best of Both Worlds option for your own uncontested divorce in California. Your local Online Divorce Lawyer offers wicked-cool online divorce software provided by a California licensed lawyer in your town for a flat fee known by you up front. 

Bear in mind that all Online Divorce Lawyers are independently owned and operated law firms.  As such, each Online Divorce Lawyer determines what’s included in the unbundled packages of legal services they offer and the fees to be charged for each package.

However, generally you will find that most Online Divorce Lawyers have recognized the wisdom of offering competitive unbundled fees, often in the range of  $700-$1500.   

This is a competitive range of fees when you consider that there are two distinct ranges of fees charged by non-lawyer divorce mills.

The cheap con-men divorce mills who have absolutely no idea what they are doing charge in the range of $300-$450.  Many quote a “complete” fee of $139 to $299, but then they add monthly “storage” fees of $35-$40. They hit your credit card every month until you cancel and they always leave one important document out of each batch of legal docs so that the court will reject your filing and the con-men get paid for more months.  This group also engages in aggressive up-selling of additional “premium” or “expedite” packages for $199+. If you read the Better Business Bureau complaints of these online divorce con-men you will discover that many consumers felt threatened that “something” would happen to their cases if they did not purchase the “premium” package.

This group of “cheap” divorce mills can easily upsell you to $400-$500. That’s not cheap when you consider they don’t know what they are doing.

The second group of non-lawyer divorce mills does good work but charges you from $750 to $3500.  They are also outrageous up-sellers of additional mostly un-needed services.

Most Online Divorce Lawyers are in the $700 to $1500 range per case for a California uncontested case on an unbundled basis – where you only use and pay for the services dictated by the facts of your case. They will have an unbundled package, with a flat fee, that suits both the facts of your California uncontested divorce as well as your budget. 

So Online Divorce Lawyer fees are highly competitive compared to the two unlicensed divorce mill groups and much more reasonable when compared to the old-fashioned traditional $7500-$10000+ divorce lawyer who will not even tell you that you do NOT need a full-service representation if your case is simple and uncontested.

And that traditional lawyer doesn’t even offer online divorce because he knows that online divorce means cost reduction.  He can’t charge you $7500+ if you’re even thinking about saving money. He only wants to scare you into thinking you need full representation at $7500+ no matter what.

The Online Divorce Lawyer range of fees gets you a strategy session (usually 30 minutes), a legal rights checkup, legal advice about your case, full and complete preparation and review of all your documentation, including your Marital Settlement Agreement, and usually some specific number of follow-up calls or emails.

You also get the “insurance policy” of having completely scalable legal services available from a local lawyer who already knows your case – should the case blow up or should some other problems develop and additional legal services become necessary – always at your sole option and always with you knowing the costs up front.

The vastly increased value of such an offer, compared to the risk of using an unlicensed divorce mill, an outrageously expensive divorce mill or a traditional full-service lawyer when full representation is not needed makes Online Divorce Lawyer an attractive proposition for a savvy California divorce consumer.

This is smart divorce for your difficult times.