Dissolutions
Divorce, or dissolution, is the unwinding of the legal partnership that was created when the two parties entered into the legal arrangement of marriage. The court's role is to divide the assets and liabilities, and to address the needs of any children. The court is not concerned with who caused the marriage to unravel, nor will the court be sympathetic to one party over another.
If you need help dealing with the emotions that inevitably occur when one is going through divorce, you need to seek professional counseling. Your attorney is not your therapist, and although many attorneys do serve as a defacto therapist for their clients, they are doing the client a disservice in doing so. There are many competent resources to provide guidance and counseling while undergoing this process. Click here for a resource guide.
The dissolution process begins when one party files an action to dissolve the marriage with the court. This action asks the court to divide the assets and liabilities, order child support and the parenting plan which clarifies the responsibilities for parenting any children of the marriage.
The quickest way to complete the dissolution process is to resolve all issues prior to the filing of the dissolution. If the parties can agree on resolution of the issues, the dissolution can be finalized in as few as 90 days after filing. The non-filing party will sign a statement of joinder that is filed at the same time of the dissolution which signifies that they are joining in the process and all issues have been resolved between the parties.
If most but not all issues can be resolved between the parties, the parties may proceed to an objective third party, such as the Center for Dispute Resolution, to help mediate any outstanding issues.
If you have resolved the issued and just need the paperwork filed, you may save money by using a service such as www.EZDisso.com to prepare the paperwork to file and complete the dissolution process.
Beware of paralegals who offer to prepare documents for a very low price. Many times, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. That is particularly true in the document preparation services ran by paralegals. These mills spend very little time looking at the documents and basically take the information you give them and put it in the right places on the forms. The problem with this approach are numerous and often do not appear until long after the dissolution has been finalized, resulting in significant additional legal fees to undo an error that was missed the first time.
The othe thing that paralegals like to encourage pro-se litigants to do is file in Lincoln County to avoid appearing in court. This sounds great and is convenient until someone has to go back into court to have child support updated, seek support for college or have the parenting plan adjusted. If you have small kids, you will be back in court at sometime to adjust some aspect of the order of child support or parenting plan. If you have to drive to Davenport, Washington when this happens, any convenience that occured when you filed for dissolution is forgotten and the problems of filing in Lincoln County become apparent.
At this time, the court clerk will give you a schedule. Your dissolution trial is usually at least a year out, if it is contested. If you need temporary support, temporary child support or a parenting plan until the trial date, you will also file for temporary orders.
If the dissolution is not contested and the parties have agreed to the division of assets and liabilities, then the dissolution can be finalized 90 days following service on the opposing party.
If there are issues that cannot be resolved and mediation wasn't an option or wasn't successful, there will be a settlement conference at some point where the parties will appear before the judge who will encourage the parties to resolve their differences. If this isn't successful, then the parties prepare for trial.
Trial is expensive, really expensive. It is not unusual for the legal bills to exceed $30,000 when the parties are unable to resolve the issues between themselves. Many people end up in trial spending this amount of money, fighting over assets that are not worth as much as they are paying their attorneys. My trial retainer is $8,000 and often doesn't fully cover the costs of trial.
It is my belief that every possible attempt should be made to resolve any outstanding issues prior to having to bring the issues before the judge. Generally speaking, when the parties spend that much money fighting each other, neither ends up "winning" and both parties come out of the experience even deeper in debt than they were to begin with. This manifests itself in continued fighting and ending up in court many additional times, again, spending lots on attorneys that could be spent on kids, vacations, cars, homes, or anything else.