File For Divorce In California Without A Lawyer : Divorce 661
In California you do not need a lawyer to file for divorce. In fact, you do not need a lawyer for your California divorce at all and can finish your divorce all by yourself. But is doing your own divorce the right thing do to.
Here are your options to file for divorce in California without a lawyer.
- File your own California divorce case with no assistance
- File your own California divorce case using the court’s self help centers
- File your own California divorce using an online tutorial (Check ours out here)
- Hire A professional Divorce Paralegal / Divorce Legal Document Assistant (That’s us!)
(watch video for more information or continue reading below video)
Now let’s talk about these different options and the plus and minuses.
1. File Your Own California Divorce Case With No Assistance
At first, doing your own divorce may seem like the most cost effective approach to doing your own California divorce. But let me warn you. You are going to pay one way or another. You are either going to pay a professional to handle your divorce case or you are going to pay with your time.
What I mean is, you will spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how to prepare the divorce paperwork, countless hours at the court’s self help centers and having paperwork rejected by the court.
How do I know this? Because 50% of my business and new clients come to us after they have spent some amount of time (and frustration) trying to handle their own California divorce case before reaching out to us for assistance.
2. File your own California divorce case using the court’s self help centers
Okay, we sort of touched on this, but this requires more explanation. The court’s self help centers are worth every penny. (hope you get the joke). They must be some of the most unfriendly people you can run into and I don’t know why.
The Court’s and the Court’s self help centers are extremely busy. Most of the court’s self help centers are first come, first served. This means every time you need to go to court for help with your divorce paperwork, you need to get there at least 30 minutes before the court opens so you can get in line.
Why? Because the court’s will usually only assist the first 20 or so people per day. Some court’s even have a sign that says that! They will help more if they have time, but there is no guarantee.
Can you imagine having to do this several times? I estimate that you will have to go to the court’s self help centers at least 5 times before your divorce case is completed.
I am sure you have much better things to do with your time. And by the way, how much work and income are you going to miss “saving money by doing it yourself?
3. File your own California divorce using an online tutorial (Check ours out here)
We came up with our own online do-it-yourself because there are people out there that have the time to do their own divorce. And our do-it-yourself divorce service is probably the best, most comprehensive online service you can find.
There are 1000’s of online divorce services and honestly before I created my own online service, I spoke negatively about the “other” online divorce services out there. You certainly get what you pay for.
What is nice about my online tutorials is that you get email support. Meaning you can email me questions to specific issues you are having and I will walk you through it. Because I am the actual person providing divorce services you can actually have access to me for questions.
With other online services, they are just that. No support and they are not in the industry so don’t understand California divorce as I do.
4. Hire A professional Divorce Paralegal / Divorce Legal Document Assistant (That’s us!)
I know this is very self-serving, but if you are going through an amicable divorce in California, using our service for your divorce is your best options. Here’s why.
First, we save you money on court fees. How? I have worked for the divorce court’s in California and know all the different ways you can file your divorce. The way we do it saves you $435 in court fees. We do this by purposely having the Respondent NOT file a response to the divorce.
Second, we save you time. When you use our full service California divorce solutions, we take care of everything. We handle the paperwork, we handle going to court and filing document, we take care of all the procedure and processes so you don’t have to worry about it.
All you do is provide us with the information we need and signatures. That’s it.