Cost Of Divorce

As a divorce professional, I hear a lot about how easy it is to get divorced. I’m assuming that the people who say this have never been divorced, because after 19 years in this field, 12 as a divorce litigation attorney with the nickname “Jaws”, I don’t think there’s anything easy about divorce at all.

Emotional toll and costs aside---and we all know people who have paid too dearly with these non-monetary factors—divorce can get expensive fast.

Lots of clients ask how much their case will cost. It’s hard to estimate a total for legal fees before a case begins because it’s hard to know how long it will take. There are some predictors, however: acrimony and agreement-readiness.

The single best predictor of the cost of a divorce is acrimony. The more unresolved emotional business, the more expensive the process gets. Ironically, it’s rare that the reason people end up in court is because they have a legal question which needs the helping hand of a judge. People end up in court because they’ve stopped talking, there are too many hurt feelings, or because they don’t know of any other way to end their relationship.

When both spouses are ready to get divorced and want to reach an agreement, fees generally stay low. Even if you have complicated finances or a complicated parenting plan, solving a divorce case is mostly about willingness to try to agree.

Lots of people pin the high costs of divorce on the lawyers themselves. I suppose sometimes that’s true, http://www.owingsmillsmediation.com/openletter.htm, (Frank letter from divorce lawyer about why folks practice like they do) but if you’re using an ethical lawyer, generally the costs become high when clients ask the lawyer to help in ways that the lawyer isn’t trained to help. Bills get high when clients call every time a question pops into their minds, rather than saving questions on a notepad by the phone to ask all at once. Or, clients will ask the lawyer to file papers requesting a court hearing when really a settlement conference would make more sense. Again, it probably all comes down to whether you’re ready to reach an agreement and whether you’re emotionally prepared to reach an agreement.

Nowadays there are a variety of ways to resolve the dissolution of a relationship: Alternative Dispute Resolution models including self-help, paralegals, mediation, Association for Conflict Resolution, and Collaborative Divorce, Collaborative Divorce www.lacfla.com, have all entered the modern day lexicon in addition to the traditional divorce litigation model.

These estimates are based on my 12 years of experience as a divorce litigator followed by 7 years in a mediation-only law practice. They’re Los Angeles numbers, so if you live in a more rural area you can reduce these estimates by 30% to 50%. The contrast is still the same, though: you can save a great deal of money and time, as well as stress, by using mediation before choosing litigation.

Here's the chart that lays it all out: http://www.peace-talks.com/compare.php

Chart of Cost of Mediated vs. Litigated Divorce

* Think I’ve exaggerated the costs of litigation? Consider this quote from the presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court at the Beverly Hills Bar Association meeting in September 2002: “By the time we see [divorce] cases in court, most people have spent all of their community assets on the divorce itself. By that time, we’re just dividing debts and allocating attorney’s fees.”

** For this calculation, I’ve used a 4% simple interest rate and subtracted the cost of mediation from the cost of litigation. This figure represents the amount of money you’d save by mediating your divorce instead of litigating, and how much that savings would be worth if you invested it at 4% interest for 20 years.