Costs Of Divorce Attorney vs Divorce Mediation In California
Tim Blankenship interviews Lisa Scholz about the costs of California divorce mediation combined with California divorce paralegal services and how the costs compare to that of using an attorney for your California divorce. You can watch the video below and we also have the transcription of the video if you prefer to read it as well.
Begin Transcription –
Lisa: And a $100,000. That is an average Divorce.
Tim: I’ve looked at the same statistics and it’s shocking. And I think people don’t really think that, that is true.
Lisa: They think it’s not going to be that for me.
Tim: Right.
Lisa: Because we’re going to keep the cost down. And we’re going to figure this out. But they don’t realize how it adds up so quickly.
Tim: Very quickly! And that’s I think that two attorneys combined. So they have—
Lisa: Exactly!
Tim: If you have 30,000 they have 30,000 and I tell you having worked for attorney that is not uncommon. And often they worked that people would get their bills at the end of the month.
And we had more people call us after receiving their bill and say I want to settle. I want to settle.
Lisa: We’re done. We’re done.
Tim: I can’t believe we’re going to have nothing left at the end of this. And only unfortunately the attorneys win.
So they take that $60,000-100,000. Even if let’s say you have a simple case.
And you have all your agreements which would make you suitable for my services and you go to an attorney that can easily run you $15,000 just because of the hourly rates of the attorneys preparing the documents filing fees and so forth.
It can add up. So when you hear our fees combined and just roughly if you have minimal issues or just a few issues and maybe one session use our service for document preparation, Lisa’s services for mediation per session you’re talking like around $2,000 at the top of things as opposed to—
Lisa: Which is a quarter of a retainer that you would have to plant down at the beginning–
Tim: For attorney.
Lisa: Before anything else is done.
Tim: Yes. Before they start the case, yes! And that’s after your $350 or 450 paid consultations.
Lisa: Right. Right, it really is just such a start difference. And again we had the time issue.
We talked about the courts talking forever to even hear your case. And there’s a lots of hoops you have to jump through before that even is on their calendar.
We can do mediation with your Divorce and it’s up to you. The court doesn’t tell you when you have to be there.
You decide on your schedule what works best for you.
It could a month if you kind of have to space it out and that would be the longest that would take for you to complete everything on your schedule, on your timeline, not somebody else is.
Tim: Yes.