Uncontested Divorce Lawyer Huntington Beach | 1-800-DIVORCE
Can You Get an Uncontested Divorce Without a Lawyer in Huntington Beach?
Yes, you can definitely get an uncontested divorce without a lawyer in Huntington Beach. However do you actually wish to?
You can get a hairstyle without a barber or beauty
parlor. You can have your automobile fixed by somebody who is not a professional mechanic. You can have a growth on your skin eliminated by somebody who is not a doctor. Nevertheless, smart customers typically do not get any of those jobs done except by a regional industry expert. That expert will be skilled, experienced and licensed and regulated by a LOCAL monitor agency. To put it simply, that professional is accountable in your area.
OK, I hear you mention the traditional outrageous expense of a lawyer – even in a basic uncontested divorce. Cost is very important. It is a legitimate issue. Nobody wants to spend too much on any product or service. Nevertheless, are you up to date on recent legal industry developments that have drastically cut the expense of uncontested divorce by a regional lawyer?
Those new trends are only being utilized by a reasonably small number of more competitive, and maybe more honest, local lawyers.
Many lawyers will not tell you about those profession developments because they don’t want you to save money. They want you to give extra money to them! That’s not fair when they are aware of industry developments that significantly decrease your expense for their services. Is it any surprise that some people don’t trust attorneys?
I’ll tell you about those trends, how to stay away from the unethical lawyers and how to make the trends work for you to get an uncontested divorce WITH a lawyer in Huntington Beach. Keep reading.
Uncontested Divorce Cost in Huntington Beach
The cost of an uncontested divorce in Huntington Beach is NOT only what you pay for the service. It’s ALL costs, now and in the future!
So you don’t wish to overpay, but you likewise don’t want to give a small amount of money to somebody who will screw up your divorce.
If you pay $300 or $400 to an unlicensed, unregulated online divorce mill that’s out-of-state or in India or Ukraine and they ruin your case and you wind up paying for their mistakes for many years, that’s not a low-cost divorce. That would be a very pricey divorce that you paid a small amount of money to get. Not clever.
Most consumers recognize that when you get a divorce, hairstyle, vehicle repaired or mole removed, you wish to get the best job done at the most reasonable expense. That sensible cost is most likely not the lowest cost, but it is most likely not far away from the lowest cost. To put it simply, in everything we consumers buy we want there to be a balance between quality and cost.
The secret to getting the best of both worlds is how to apply that principle (a sliding scale of both quality and expense) to getting an uncontested divorce in Huntington Beach.
Uncontested Divorce Process in Huntington Beach
Remember that even if you have an uncontested case, you need to still hire a regional Huntington Beach divorce lawyer on full traditional representation if your case has some complex issues, if there is a very high dollar value to the marital estate, if there is domestic violence or if your partner has already contracted a lawyer.
If your spouse has currently chosen a lawyer, you are highly recommended to get your own lawyer no matter how uncomplicated and easy you consider your case to be. Do not listen to your partner or your spouse’s lawyer advising you that one lawyer can take care of both of you.
So, presuming that you have an uncontested case that contains no complicated issues, your marital estate is not big, there’s no domestic violence and your partner has not hired a lawyer, let’s look rapidly at each of the 4 available choices to get an uncontested divorce with reference to both expense and quality.
What Are Your Options To Get an Uncontested Divorce in Huntington Beach?
- Do It Yourself
- Unlicensed Unregulated Online Divorce Mill Out of State or in India/Ukraine/Mexico
- Local Online Divorce Lawyer
- Local Lawyer on Traditional Full Representation
Let’s summarize your 4 uncontested divorce options in Huntington Beach:
| Do-It-Yourself | $0 in money; but what are the costs to you of hours spent standing in line at self-help or trying to figure it out online, which is practically impossible in 2024? | Low Quality; No Professional Guidance; No Complete Instructions Available; Time Consuming; Many Rejections of Your Documents by the Court; Frustrating; Very Difficult to Accomplish in 2024 and Beyond; If You Fail (you probably will), You’ll Have To Hire Someone Below and They Will Know That You Have Some Problem in Your Case and Will Charge You Much More Than Their Regular Fee; California DIY Divorce is FALSE ECONOMY |
| Cheap Online Divorce Mills – Incompetent, Fraudulent and Mostly Out-of-State | $139-$1100 – but you’ll NEVER get through at $139 – that just gets you in the door so that the up-selling can begin. Also hidden monthly fees – they hit your credit card every month. So they make sure your case is delayed as long as possible. | Unlicensed; Unregulated; Low Quality Work; No Legal Advice Provided; No Accountability; Most Located Out-of-State or in India; Lots of Fraud, Trickery and Up-Selling; Lots of Mistakes That Affect Your Legal and Economic Rights for Many Years; No Local Knowledge; They Get Paid Monthly – So They Purposefully Slow Down Your Case So That They Get Paid More |
| Expensive Online Divorce Mills – Mostly in California; Fronted by Lawyers, but NOT Law Firms | $1400-$4500; “Teaser” get-em-in-the-door fees as low as $275-$400, but those packages are incomplete and will NOT get you divorced. Those packages just start the up-selling. | Not Lawyers; No Legal Advice; High Quality and Good Local Knowledge; Everything Aggressively Upsold – Including the Traditional Lawyers Who Own the Place. Examples: Hello Divorce, divorce.com and AIdivorce.legal |
| Local Online Divorce Lawyer | $700-$2000; new option; has attracted more competitive, creative, problem-solving divorce lawyers | High Quality; No Fraud; Full Accountability; Licensed Professional; Local Knowledge; Cost Effective: Uses Lawyer Only Where Needed; Scale-able As Needed; Deals With Problems That MIGHT Arise but Does NOT Require You To Pay High Fees Automatically In Case Something MIGHT Happen; If Your Case Remains Uncontested, You Know Your Cost Up Front |
| Local Divorce Lawyer -Traditional Full Representation | $3500-$7500++ PLUS $300-$400 per hour after they burn off the retainer | High Quality; No Fraud; Full Accountability; Licensed Professional; Local Knowledge; Convenient; At Least 4X Overpriced |
Now let’s analyze your 4 uncontested divorce options in Huntington Beach:
Do It Yourself
You can download blank divorce documents online from your local Superior Court website. But what are you going to do with them then? The state has to make them downloadable due to the fact that they are public documents. Even if you can download them does not mean you’ll understand how to complete them and get a cost-free divorce.
The State of California has actually
made one of the most complicated divorce processeses in the nation. According to a current Insider Monkey research study, California has the 2nd most complicated divorce procedure in the whole country. Only Vermont is more challenging.
Doing your own divorce in California used to be a lot easier and was possible for lots of folks pre-Internet. In the ’80s and early ’90s, you might pick up free documents from the court, dust off your old typewriter and get an uncontested California divorce, even with minor children, on maybe a dozen forms totaling 20-25 sheets of paper. Now, it would take about 35-40 separate state and county multi-page legal documents on perhaps 120-150 sheets of paper to get the same divorce.
And there are no magic California divorce guidelines. The instructions that the state of California furnishes are guidelines only. They will not assist you to get a divorce in your specific case. Every divorce case is different. If there were written guidelines that covered all cases, they would be hundreds of pages long. If there was a YouTube video that revealed you how to prepare and process your uncontested divorce, it would be many hours long.
Don’t fall into the DIY trap. You will screw it up, and it will cost a lot more to repair than it would have cost for you to select {a city} online divorce lawyer in the first place (see below). Going it alone in California divorce these days is a false economy.
Unlicensed Online Divorce Mill
I’ve written substantially before about online divorce scams in California. That is simply one of my numerous blog posts on online divorce fraud. Also see an excellent piece by my associate at NetDivorce. However do not just take our word. Here is what happened when a professional author contracted one of the most significant online divorce mills.
Just by way of an example, here is simply one of the lots of specific frauds we’ve pinpointed in the online divorce mill industry.
Back on January 30, 2015, I filed with the FBI’s online fraud division an absolute slam-dunk fraud complaint against mydivorcepapers.com, probably the most significant divorce mill in California. It was designated Complaint ID I1501301241468482. That complaint proved beyond any reasonable doubt that mydivorcepapers was running a phony testimonial fraud. It was using a self-owned site to collect phony customer reviews as though they were genuine testimonials from real clients. It showed that the fake testimonial site had merely a very few pages (a Google search revealed that just mydivorcepapers.com and its related site were clients of the fake testimonial site). That fake testimonial site was likewise hosted on the very same server as mydivorcepapers.com. These guys are not clever.
I never ever heard anything back from the FBI. Mydivorcepapers.com is STILL running the same testimonial fraud over 8 years later (at the most recent update of this article), though they have indeed moved the phony testimonial site to another server. Right now, California divorce consumers are being defrauded into employing mydivorcepapers.com on the basis that they have thousands of genuine customer reviews when they do not.
Also, look at the Better Business Bureau pages for 3 of the 4 most popular online divorce mills in the California market:
| Number of BBB Complaints | BBB Rating | Link to BBB Page for This Website | |
|---|---|---|---|
| getdivorcepapers.com | 105 | F | BBB page |
| onlinedivorce.com | 37 | F | BBB page |
| mydivorcepapers.com | 78 | F | BBB page |
Keep in mind that the number of complaints and BBB ratings listed in the table above are dynamic. These were accurate at the time of publication. They rarely get better.
Finally, check this video that covers just one of the many widespread pricing frauds currently being used by the 4 most popular online divorce mills.
Online divorce mills are amongst the most dishonest online services that exist in ANY sector. Nobody polices them. They are mainly out of state. A few are in India or Ukraine. Neither your county District Attorney nor the California Attorney General, Consumer Fraud Division, will have an interest in pursuing them. Your Better Business Bureau or Yelp grievances won’t even touch them. They already have dozens or hundreds of grievances and their BBB scores are often “F.” They can cheat a lot faster than you can make a complaint.
Online divorce deception pays and it pays BIG. These guys simply add in new scams and new sites all the time. Divorce customers in Huntington Beach have indeed been getting screwed for many years, and no one cares. Nobody will protect you. Stay away from unlicensed, uncontrolled online divorce mills. They are bad news.
Local Online Divorce Lawyer
Here are 10 reasons why this is the strongly recommended “best of both worlds” option to get an uncontested divorce in Huntington Beach:
- No fraud – There are serious penalties imposed by the California Bar Association for ANY unethical behavior by lawyers. All fees must be clearly disclosed upfront. There can be no price fraud or advertising fraud of any kind – pursuant to strict Bar Association ethics rules.
- Online divorce lawyers in Huntington Beach are licensed by the state bar and well-educated in the law.
- California lawyers are required to take continuing legal education courses.
- Local lawyers in Huntington Beach know California law and local Superior Court Rules of Court as well as many policies of individual judges at your local Superior Court. They are also well known at your local Superior Court.
- The younger generation of California lawyers tends to be more competitive than lawyers have been in the past.
- California lawyers are now embracing and using more technology for the purposes of reducing costs and increasing efficiencies. Example: see a highly innovative online divorce mediation service offered by our Online Divorce Lawyer in Carlsbad.
- California lawyers are now embracing various Virtual Law Office practices that use technology to reduce costs even further than can be done by divorce software alone.
- The California Bar Association has approved unbundled (also called Limited Scope representation) legal services in certain types of consumer law cases, such as uncontested divorce. This means that many online divorce lawyers will offer such unbundled document-review services – many in the $700-1500 range – very competitive when compared to the online divorce mills which provide a far riskier and less valuable service.
- Online divorce lawyers provide a case strategy session to protect your economic and legal rights and will discuss case strategy with you before your case is filed.
- Online divorce lawyers now use wicked-cool divorce software and other cloud-based support systems that save you money.
Local Lawyer on Traditional Full Representation
I have indeed previously covered this option above. This is the conventional option. This is full traditional legal representation by a local lawyer. You pay him or her a large fee and s/he does every little thing in the case for you. It’s convenient however way over-priced.
Up until the early ’80s, this was the only choice. Then, local paralegals began to eat into the attorneys’ previous divorce monopoly. From around 1999, regional divorce lawyers have lost almost all of their uncontested divorce business to the deceitful online divorce mills, who have better sites and are far more competitive than attorneys.
There are times (noted above) when you absolutely require to use full legal representation – even in an uncontested divorce. But if you do not have any of the noted reasons to use this option, you are overpaying by a big amount. However, the quality of work will likely be excellent.
Why Not Get the Best of Both Worlds in the Uncontested Divorce Process in Huntington Beach
Better still, forget about calling lawyers who are not competitive and have not begun to utilize the two dominant uncontested divorce industry trends: unbundled services and online divorce. Tell them to enjoy the 1980’s.
If the best of both worlds makes sense to you, get started by either of the following options:
The problem with the providers in this group is that they are all aggressive up-sellers. Their only goal is to get you signed up to a cheaper package and then up-sell you to a $1500-$4500 package.