Online Divorce Lawyer Premium 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 must be 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 has the uncontested divorce lawyer business model to prove it.

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, unqualified 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 Premium came along, 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 risks of hiring an unqualified online divorce mill or a traditional divorce lawyer who has never heard of online divorce.  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 smarts and the competitive edge to be an Online Divorce Lawyer. We hope that you will reward those who have demonstrated their savvy.

Regrettably, yes.  

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

Because the unqualified 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.

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 uncontested 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-$1900, depending on kids, property, debt and other factors.   

This is a very competitive range of fees for lawyers 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 $169 to $299, but then they add monthly fees that can be any amount, according to their Terms of Use. 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 a few 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 and Trustpilot 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 $400 to $4200.  That wide fee range gives you a clue to the problem. These are 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 Premium 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 Premium 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 of a certain duration.

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 with your full advance knowledge, 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 one-size-fits-all full-service lawyer when full representation is not needed makes Online Divorce Lawyer Premium an attractive proposition for a savvy California divorce consumer.

This is smart divorce for your difficult times.

We tell you that we offer 2 pricing options that are quite different: (1) our flat $397 fee for Fast-Track with no ups or extras ever – where we prepare ALL of your divorce docs and you handle your own court filing and service of docs on your spouse by your trusty friend or relative (with our excellent written instructions); and (2) our Online Divorce Lawyer Premium service where you don’t hire us but instead hire one of our panel of experienced Online Divorce Lawyers who use our software to prepare your docs and they will provide you a flat fee unbundled package of review, advice and guidance services you select starting at $700-$1000.

But, if you think about it, there’s really a hidden third option that may be the best. Buy our $397 Fast-Track package and then hire our closest Online Divorce Lawyer on a consultative basis however many times you need to, based on the circumstances and natural progression of your case.

So for example, let’s say there’s a question or two about retirement plan division right after your spouse has been served. Call 1-800-DIVORCE and speak to your closest Online Divorce Lawyer.  Tell him or her the issue and tell him or her you have an Online Divorce Lawyer account. With your consent, we can flip a couple of switches in our control panel and that lawyer has full access to your case data using his Online Divorce Lawyer password. When you’re finished with the consultation, tell us and we flip that switch back to you alone.

And sure, it will cost you some money for that consultation. It could cost $200-$250 for a 30-45 minute phone consultation. It just depends on what’s involved.

And if you never need to use that available consultation, that’s the very best outcome because you’ve got your whole case prepared for $397 and you had the value of the availability of consultation, and it cost you ZERO. You’re welcome.