There are a couple of factors you can use to determine if you should do your own divorce or if you should hire a company to complete your divorce for you.
The first thing to figure out is if you have the money to hire a divorce service in Santa Clarita to help you. When people call, this is what I tell them. If you have more time than money, then you may want to consider attempting to complete your own divorce. It can be done, however it will be a long frustrating process.
There are free services out there such as the Court’s self help centers, but the services are limited and they are extremely busy. Using the self help centers will takes many trips and you will experience a lot of frustration along the way. But it is is free. So if you are short on funds and perhaps unemployed, this may be your only option.
So lets assume you have the money and hiring our service is an option. But you are still thinking that you could save the money and complete it on your own. The next thing to consider is what your time is worth. How much time are you willing to spend on the weekends and on the evenings, researching and trying to figure out what divorce forms to complete?
Some look at the initial divorce forms and feel like they can complete it, and you probably can. The thing about the divorce process is that the paperwork gets more complicated as you go along. Sure the initial documents are easy enough, but then comes the financial disclosures. Those are a bit tougher to figure out, especially with how to serve them and what documents to attach. Which forms to file and which ones get served. You will have lots of questions, trust me.
If you get through the first two phases of the divorce paperwork, the most difficult part is the judgment. The judgment consists of about 25 pages of attachments. There is a lot of information you have to cover and it is easy to make mistakes. Many people fail to complete the judgment correctly several times which causes significant delays and frustrations on your part.
I have clients that come to me at various stages of the divorce process. Those just starting out that that immediately realize that they cannot or do not want to attempt this on their own. Then there are those that start the process and later realize they need help. Then there are those that attempted to complete the entire divorce process by themselves and submit the judgment.
I will be honest with you, there ends up being more work when clients come to us after trying to get all the way through the divorce process on their own. Usually we will have to re file many of the documents from the beginning and amend the divorce forms that were filed because they were done wrong.
We recommend that you hire us from the beginning. In most cases the cost will be the same, regardless of where you are at in the process. But we can pick up where you left off.
Give us a call if you would like more information about our Santa Clarita Divorce Service. We are headquartered in Santa Clarita, California and serve all the courts in Los Angeles County.