Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [27]
2. Negotiate with your spouse and decide how to divide up property and how to handle support, custody, and visitation.
3. Complete and file the final papers (including your marital settlement agreement, which sets out all your property, support, and custody decisions) to make your divorce official and get a court's approval of the agreements you've made.
The steps almost always go in that order, although sometimes people agree about property, debts, and child custody before they even start the paperwork.
Summary Dissolution for Short Term Marriages
If you've been married no more than a few years and don't have a lot of entanglements, you can use a streamlined procedure for getting divorced. Typical requirements for a summary (simplified) divorce, which you and your spouse must file jointly, include:
• You have been married for a relatively short time, usually fewer than five years (though a few states allow summary divorce when you've been married as long as eight or ten years).
• You both agree to give up any right to spousal support.
• There are no children of the marriage (if either you or your spouse has children from another marriage, you can still do a summary divorce).
• You don't own a house, either together or separately, and neither of you has a lease on any property that's for a term longer than a year from the time you're filing.
• You don't have significant assets, either jointly or separately owned (generally this means in the $25,000 to $30,000 range).
• You don't have significant debt (in most states, that means more than about $5,000 to $15,000).
Some states may have different requirements-for example, a minimum length of time you must be separated before you file for summary divorce. Usually, a summary divorce involves filing only one or two fill-in-the-blanks forms that you can get from the court, paying a filing fee, waiting a certain period of time-how long depends on your state, but varies from one month to a year-and then asking the court to make an order granting the divorce. You're rarely required to make a court appearance, and you can probably prepare the paperwork yourself, without a lawyer.
Not all states offer a summary divorce option. If you're interested, your first step is to figure out whether your state allows it, and if it does, whether you meet the requirements. Chapter 15 lists ways to get information about divorce laws and how to do research on your own. If you find you are a candidate for a summary dissolution, talk to your spouse about it and if the two of you agree, see the section below called "Preparing and Filing Legal Papers."
Summary Divorce Step by Step
1. Agree on how you'll divide your property and debts.
2. File divorce forms with the local family court.
3. Wait a few months (exact time depends on state law).
4. Request final divorce decree from the court.
Default Divorce
A default divorce is another form of uncontested divorce. It's uncontested because one spouse never even files court papers-everything gets done based on the filing spouse's paperwork. If you file for divorce and your spouse doesn't respond-that is, doesn't file any papers with the court-you can get a default divorce.
You might also use default divorce procedures if you and your spouse agree to do it that way and your state allows it. And you'd have to get a default divorce if you haven't been able to find out where your spouse is, even after making a genuine effort.
If You Serve Your Spouse and There's No Response
If you prepare the paperwork to start your divorce, file it with the court, and deliver it to your spouse (all of which is explained below) and your spouse fails to respond or file any paperwork within the required time period, you can try to get a default divorce. (This is called "taking the default" of your spouse.) However, it's a good idea to get in touch with your spouse to find out whether the deadline has simply been forgotten. Although technically you can seek a default divorce