Not for me, thank you, but if you want to do it, you can.
Couples often hope to save a few dollars by doing without a lawyer when they agree on everything. After all, they simply have to prepare some papers and get a judge to sign them. Right? No reason to pay a lawyer to do that.
Gee, when you buy a house and you and the seller agree to everything, you don't really need a lawyer then, either. Or if you're charged with a murder and you just want to tell the prosecuting attorney what really happened and work out a plea agreement. Don't need a lawyer then, either. Right?
If you and your spouse in fact agree to everything, the legal fees will be relatively small. But the consequences of doing it wrong are huge. (If you two can't agree to everything, and your spouse has an attorney, then going ahead without a lawyer means you are going to be in court by yourself, essentially trying to fight a shark barehanded. Generally you will simply end up being ripped to shreds, and if the lawyer is really good, you will never even know it.)
Try it yourself without a lawyer and you could end up still being married. You could fail to address serious tax issues. You could end up with no real enforceable visitation rights to your children. If your spouse goes bankrupt right after the divorce, you could still end up stuck with all of the marital debts he or she agreed to take in the divorce and no way to ever collect from him or her.
You could end up with everything taking twice as long as needed.
Divorce involves several complicated legal issues.
Can you do it without a lawyer? Sure. But please don't call me afterwards to try to clean up the mess. And don't bother calling me or e-mailing me to ask for advice on how to do it. I think trying to handle your own divorce without an attorney is a mistake and that if I were to try to help you to do it I would be inviting a lawsuit for malpractice.
Despite all of this, if you insist on drinking your own poison, you can go to the Nolo Press web site on keeping lawyers out of divorce by clicking here. But keep in mind that while I have not reviewed the site at all, I have reviewed other Nolo Press web pages, and have found legal advice that is so deficient that any lawyer contributing should be embarrassed. (Specifically I refer to the advice you see by clicking here in which Nolo Press addresses filing suit for domestic violence, and fails to mention that there is now a Federal civil rights cause of action for domestic violence. There has been since part of the 1994 Crime Bill included provisions on gender motivated violence, you can see my own explanation of how the bill works by clicking here. Failing to mention this, and to suggest that in some states a domestic violence victim might not even be able to file suit, is a glaring omission. But if you want to trust these folks for advice on a "do it yourself" divorce, go right ahead. Just be forewarned.) Several office supply stores also offer do-it-yourself kits of forms to use for divorce, though I have likewise looked at none of them to determine whether any would work in Tennessee, or to see what you might need to do to make them work.
Now, all of that aside, there
are ways to severely reduce the role, and cost of an attorney.
1) Review only: You can prepare documents and have an attorney
review them only. You would be your own attorney in the case, but
you would have an attorney make sure everything was done right so you could
actually end up divorced.
2) Mediation: Or you can have a mediated divorce (click
here for more on Tennessee's mediation procedures, and click
here for more on the concept of mediated divorce in general), again
with an attorney simply reviewing documents to make certain everything
is done properly, and with attorney's fees very low as a result.
3) Unbundled legal services: If a lawyer handles your case as "attorney
of record", he or she is responsible for everything, and has to closely
watch over the entire case, holding onto the file later and often being
called on to follow up for years to come, but there are other ways to do
use an attorney, reducing the lawyer's involvement in the case to specific
responsibilities. Some of the specific responsibilites might include
the following:
When I represent a client in a divorce, or in any other case, I make clear I do not want them even talking with the other side unless I am present or I approve the conversation first. There is a reason for this -- if I represent them as their attorney, I am responsible for everything that happens in the case and can be blamed for anything that goes wrong. In these cases I tell my clients that they do not even represent themselves -- I represent them (though certainly they are the only one to decide whether to settle a case or to propose a settlement). But if I am not fully representing a party and they are in fact representing themselves, I'm very happy to have them negotiate the terms of their divorce without my presence, involvement or even my knowledge.
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