Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [9]
Having a separate court for family cases means that the judges are knowledgeable about family law and have lots of experience with different family situations. The court clerks and assistants tend to be knowledgeable as well, which will be especially important if you are representing yourself.
Residency Requirements
Before you can use a state's court system to get divorced, you must live in the state for a certain length of time. A few states have no specified requirement; some require only 6 weeks; some require a one-year residency, and many more use six months as the required period. See Chapter 3 for a list of residency requirements.
Kinds of Divorces
There's not just one way to divorce. The differences can be in the law, like fault or no-fault, or in the way you and your spouse approach it, like uncontested, contested, or default. This section describes the different kinds of divorce in general terms. All of the issues raised here are discussed in greater detail in later chapters.
No matter how you slice it, divorce is expensive and timeconsuming. The most important variable is how well you and your spouse are able to put aside your anger and grief and cooperate on the big issues of money and children. The better you are at working together to make decisions for your changing family structure, the better for your bank account and for your chances of emerging from the divorce with a decent relationship with your ex.
Kinds of Divorce at a Glance
Summary Divorce
In many states, an expedited divorce procedure is available to couples who haven't been married for very long (usually five years or fewer), don't own much property, don't have children, and don't have significant joint debts. Both spouses need to agree to the divorce, and you must file court papers jointly.
A summary (sometimes called simplified) divorce involves a lot less paperwork than other types of divorce-a few forms are often all it takes. You can probably get the forms you need from the local family court. For this reason, summary divorces are easy to do yourself, without the help of a lawyer. (There's more about summary divorce in Chapter 3.)
Uncontested Divorce
The best choice, if you can make it happen, is an uncontested divorce. That's one in which you and your spouse work together to agree on the terms of your divorce, and file court papers cooperatively to make the divorce happen.
There will be no formal trial, and you probably won't have to ever appear in court. Instead, you file court forms and a "marital settlement agreement" that details the agreements you've made about how you want to divide your property and debts, what your custody arrangements for your children will be, and whether support payments will change hands. Your settlement, and your final divorce, will have to be approved by a judge, which shouldn't be any problem. The judge will usually approve a settlement agreement unless it's clear that the terms are completely unfair to one person or were arranged when one person was under duress.
An uncontested divorce is the least expensive kind of divorce you can get. But even it will take a bite out of your wallet. You'll have to figure out how to prepare and file the court papers, which probably involves buying books-you've already got this one, but you may want others. (Your court's website may provide free help, too-it's worth looking. Chapter 15 has a list of court websites for each state.)
You'll probably be able to handle your uncontested divorce with little or no help from a lawyer, but you may want to ask a lawyer to look over your paperwork and, perhaps, to review your settlement agreement. Many couples use a counselor or a mediator to help them come to agreement on property