Is Online Divorce Safe and Legal in California?

No – and yes. Online divorce in California is lawful but risky – unless you take just one  straightforward safety measure. I’m going to reveal to you exactly what that safety measure is. However, I need to take you through some explanation first. You should understand why I recommend that safety measure and just how it will make online divorce both safe AND legal in California.

Is Online Divorce Legal in California?

First, let me discuss what I mean by the claim that online divorce is legal. You can not log into some website and get a divorce just because you logged into that website. You likewise can not log into some site and purchase a divorce. In other words, nobody can offer or ensure you a divorce. That holds true of a $300 unlicensed online divorce mill in India and it’s also accurate for a $10,000 California divorce lawyer.

You can only get a legal divorce in California by submitting to court a properly prepared batch of specific documents at your local Superior Court, serving them on your spouse together with a bigger batch of more complicated property/debt/income disclosure docs, waiting 31 days (in most cases) and after that submitting another very large batch of properly-prepared really perplexing docs at your local Superior Court to obtain judgment. Then 2 to 16 weeks later (depending on the county you reside in), a judge of the Superior Court will either authorize and sign your judgment or decline it for causes specified. If your judgment gets rejected, you correct whatever the judge wishes to be corrected and then do the last step over again. You keep doing the last step till the judge approves and signs your judgment. Your divorce ends up being final either 6 months plus one day from the date your spouse was served or on the date the judge approves and signs your judgment, whichever is later. That is the ONLY way to get a divorce in California.

Nevertheless, to make the process of getting an uncontested divorce in California more convenient and more economical, utilizing online divorce to get your uncontested divorce is almost a no-brainer. Online divorce will decrease expenses and increase the precision of the information in your case. It also empowers you in your own case due to the fact that you will be the individual who is providing the substantial amounts of information needed in a California divorce. You provide that date into a safe and protected online divorce interview from the comfort of your office or home and you do so at your own speed. You can finish the online interview in one session or several sessions over a several days. All of your data will be encrypted and safely saved for when you log back in next.

You should NOT use online divorce to get your divorce if you know that your case is going to be disputed (you and your spouse are disputing over some matter). You ought to also not use online divorce if you have a complex case (domestic violence, tax issues, special-needs child, living trust, active business enterprise being divided between the spouses, and so on – this is not a thorough list of complicated cases). And finally, you ought to not utilize online divorce if you have a very large marital estate. If you have actually got a great deal of possessions (certainly more than a $10M gross fair market value marital estate and most likely over a $5M marital estate), it’s simply a real excellent idea to have full old-fashioned legal representation from a regional California licensed divorce lawyer – just because of the extent of the properties at stake.

For all other kinds of cases, online divorce is wise, affordable and totally legal in California.

Nevertheless, to make the operation of getting an uncontested divorce in California easier and cheaper, using online divorce to get your uncontested divorce is almost a no-brainer. Online divorce will lower expenses and increase the correctness of the data in your case. It also empowers you in your own case since you will be the person who is posting the substantial amounts of information required in a California divorce. You input that date into a safe and secure online divorce interview from the comfort of your home or office and you do so at your own speed. You can complete the online interview in one session or a number of sessions over a number of days. All of your information will be encrypted and safely saved for when you log back in next.

You should NOT use online divorce to get your divorce if you know that your case is going to be disputed (you and your spouse are arguing about some issue). You need to also not use online divorce if you have a complicated case (domestic violence, tax problems, special-needs child, living trust, active business organization being divided between the spouses, etc – this is not a complete list of complex cases). And finally, you need to not use online divorce if you have a huge marital estate. If you’ve got a great deal of properties (certainly more than a $10M gross reasonable market value marital estate and probably over a $5M marital estate), it’s simply a genuine excellent idea to have complete traditional legal representation from a regional California certified divorce lawyer – just because of the degree of the assets at stake.

For all other kinds of cases, online divorce is smart, cost-efficient and entirely legal in California.

Why Should You Consider Online Divorce At All?

If you have made the difficult private choice to divorce and you are lucky enough to have an uncontested case in which you and your spouse/partner remain in understanding on all concerns, then online divorce is absolutely the very best way to proceed. If your case fits that description, you do not need to spend too much on a $7500 to $10,000 divorce lawyer.

However, at the other end of the cost scale, it is nearly unachievable to go it alone any longer and get a free divorce or free of charge divorce documents in a California divorce. Back in the ’80s, you could get divorced with kids utilizing maybe 15 Judicial Council legal docs on 35-40 sheets of paper. Today, that very same case would take roughly 35 much more perplexing Judicial Council docs on 200-220 sheets of paper. If you do not have kids, the paperwork load is a little less.

California divorce has actually become exceptionally bewildering this last thirty years. According to a recent Insider Monkey research study, California now has the 2nd most problematic divorce procedure in the entire nation. Just Vermont is harder. Long gone are the days when you could purchase a divorce forms package from your local Superior Court, dust off your old Remington typewriter and utilize a $20 book to find out how to do your own divorce.

And if you believe that the state of California publishes handy guides on how to get a divorce, forget it. The state of California does in reality publish useful guides, but in order to be “convenient,” they have to be short and incomplete. If the state released a total handbook on how to get a divorce, it would be 400 pages long and nobody would read it. The guidelines offered by the state are helpful and accurate, as far as they go, however unless you are currently a lawyer, you will not have the ability to use them to get a divorce on you own for free.

If you do not believe me on this, I can only wish you all the best in your case. Keep in mind that if you go it alone and mess up your case, it will cost more, likely through a lawyer, to remedy the issues. Going it alone in a California divorce is misleading economy.

So you really should consider online divorce because it is a far more suitable method than the other 2 options: a full representation lawyer or do it yourself. Don’t overspend on a traditional California divorce lawyer representation and do not fall into the DIY trap.

Is Online Divorce Safe in California?

“No” is the response. Why isn’t online divorce safe? Due to the fact that the approximate 2 dozen online divorce mills that control the online divorce market are significantly fraudulent and unskilled. Not all of them are that way, however the majority of the bigger/more popular ones are fraudulent and inept.

The benchmark of quality of work supplied by a large number of online divorce mills is incredibly low. These business are unlicensed and unregulated. They use inexperienced, low-quality, high turnover personnel that will be practicing their brand-new tasks on your divorce.

Divorce customers do not typically post publicly about issues in their divorce cases, but when a skilled professional author employs one of the worst online divorce mills and things go wrong, as they typically do, well, you can read her story.

Fraud is probably a more typical problem than incompetence, but with fraud, they just steal your money. With incompetence, they can screw your legal and financial interests for many years to come. If you pay $300 to an unlicensed online divorce mill and you wind up shelling out money for their mistakes for years to come, that’s NOT an inexpensive divorce in California.

This Table Highlights the Four Biggest Online Divorce Mills in the California Market and Their Major Problems

Name	Claimed Complete Fee	Main Problems
completecase.com	$299	Price Fraud – This fee is for the first 30 days only. See video below.
getdivorcepapers.com	$129	1. Price Fraud – This fee is for the first 30 days only. See video below. 2. Based in India 3. Incompetent – 105 complaints and F rating at BBB
onlinedivorce.com	$129	1. Price Fraud – This fee is for the first 30 days only. See video below. 2. Labeled as misleading advertisers by BBB. 3. Incompetent – 37 complaints and F rating at BBB
mydivorcepapers.com	$139	1. Price Fraud – This fee is for the first 30 days only. See video below. 2. Incompetent – 80 complaints and F rating by BBB.

Also Check This Video About Widespread Price Fraud in Online Divorce – All Four of the Outfits in the Table Above are in This Video

So What To Do To Make Online Divorce Safe and Legal in California

Here’s the part where I pledged to tell you the one simple preventative measure to take that will make online divorce safe in California.

Why would you risk your legal and economic future by hiring an unqualified, unaccountable, out-of-state online divorce mill when nearby qualified online divorce lawyers are providing all of the advantages of online divorce, plus legal advice, plus a legal rights checkup plus a legal insurance policy, plus an unbundled doc-review service (so that you only utilize a lawyer where you require one) at a competitive price? Online Divorce Lawyer is genuinely the Best of Both Worlds – online divorce done by a neighborhood licensed lawyer who understands the laws of California and the local guidelines of court and practices of your local Superior Court.

Most divorce lawyers in California are NOT online divorce lawyers and never will be.  They only want to charge you $7500+ for full legal representation – even in an uncontested case.  Most divorce consumers do not know about unbundled services and most lawyers won’t tell you about them. But most lawyers don’t know that online divorce is available to them. Because we want lawyers who sign up for our Online Divorce Lawyer service to do well, we are limiting the number of Online Divorce Lawyers to one per major city.

Keep in mind that each Online Divorce Lawyer is an individually owned and run law office. So each picks its fee and the services provided. However, most Online Divorce Attorneys are offering unbundled online divorce/doc-review services in the vicinity of $700-1500. This is an incredibly good value compared to the average online divorce mill rate of $300-1000 for a service that is not total and has lots of scams and errors.

You will also have the “back-up plan” of having entirely scale-able legal services offered from a local lawyer who understands your case– just in case the case blow up or should some other legal services be required later in the case. You will already have a local lawyer on your team who is educated about the facts of your case. Those extra services will be at an additional charge, but you will know the trigger and the fee beforehand. Keep in mind that additional services and fees are not needed in most cases. With an online divorce mill, they are not even readily available. You would need to start from square one with a strange local lawyer who does not know your case. Why not start with a local Online Divorce Lawyer who will be with you the whole case.

So you are not going to discover Online Divorce Lawyers spending time around street corners. The best method to discover a regional California divorce lawyer who has actually wised up to the benefits of offering an online divorce service in uncontested cases is to follow one of these 2 choices:

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