I’ve been thinking about what are the questions that I hear over
and over again and thought I might share those. The first one that I hear
every time is,
“how much does a divorce cost?”. I usually answer this by saying, that’s like asking how much does
a car cost. It depends is the answer to both of those questions. It depends
on if you are going to cooperate, if the two of you are going to go out
and get attorneys and fight tooth and nail it’s going to cost more
than if the two of you cooperate. Litigation will undoubtedly be the most
expensive and that’s where each of you go out and get an attorney
and you cooperate or not and you go before a judge and the judge makes
the decisions about your issues.
The opposite of that is mediation. That’s the least expensive to
where you both sit down with a mediator and work out your division of
property division of assets and debts and put together a parenting plan.
Now sometimes that doesn’t work. In the middle is Collaborative
Law. Collaborative is a team approach so it is going to be a little more
expensive than mediation but not near as expensive as litigation would be.
The second question I hear often is,
“How long does a divorce take?”.In California there is a six month and one day waiting period before a
divorce can be finalized. That time doesn’t start ticking until
the papers have been filed with the court, have come back to the petitioner,
the one who initiated the divorce, and served on the respondent. So on
the day the respondent is served the clock begins ticking and in six months
and one day the divorce may be finalized in California. That doesn’t
mean that automatically it’s going to be. You still have to do your
work. The papers have to be presented to the court so the court can approve
them but six months and one day is the soonest. In mediation we generally
have all the work completed in two to three months. The paperwork then
goes to the court and the court will sign the papers. But the divorce
won’t be final until that six month, one day waiting.
Check-in with us next week to learn more about the common questions regarding divorce.