If both of you want the divorce and are working together to reach an agreement on the terms, your divorce is not going to cost a great deal, about $110 for court costs and anywhere from $100 to a $500 more, depending on the lawyer you use, the complexity of your financial situation, and the number of changes you want made after your attorney drafts the Marital Dissolution Agreement.

        But even if you and your spouse can't agree on the day of the week and your case will have to go to trial, there are a great number of things you can do alone, to save time and money in your divorce. Most of the suggestions here are premised on the idea of you playing a very active role in your divorce, meaning not simply turning your divorce over to your spouse, or to your lawyer, or to the judge, or to anyone else.  It's your divorce.  You're the one who will have to live with the consequences.

Do You Need a Lawyer?         There's no legal requirement that you use a lawyer to get divorced.  You can go to most large office supply stores buy a do-it-yourself "Divorce Kit" for about $25 (the court costs would be another $110 or so).  Will this actually work?  I have no idea.  The makers of the "kits" often assure the "kit" divorce will be accepted by courts in all 50 states.  But that's their guarantee and not mine.  Personally, I think doing this is begging for personal disaster, unless you at the very least have an attorney review everything with you to make sure it will work as you want.  Trying to use the kit with a lawyer reviewing things would significantly reduce your costs, requiring you only to pay the attorney for the time of the review, perhaps as little as half an hour if everything is done properly and the forms are in fact worth anything.

        If you have children, or real property, or any retirement funds are involved, or interest in a business, or there is any dispute over personal property or debts, or any unresolved tax issues or pretty much any other dispute... the issues involved are too complicated to be resolved without an attorney.  There are too many places where simple mistakes can have serious consequences that would be very costly to correct later (if they can be corrected at all) to attempt to handle it without an attorney.  Now the extent of the attorney's involvement remains an open question.  At the very least you will want an attorney reviewing what you do and are planning to do to make sure you have considered everything and are moving ahead on the proper course -- but this approach again might simply involve having the attorney review documents, discuss your situation and options and essentially acting as an advisor or coach.  This will significantly reduce the number of hours and responsibility of the attorney and reduce your legal fees... if everything goes well and you follow the attorney's advice properly without making such a mess it costs more to have the attorney come in later to try to clean things up.

Think about Uncontested Divorce         Even if you use a lawyer, you can still save time and money if you and your spouse agree on what you want from the divorce and use an uncontested divorce.  The main advantage of uncontested divorce is that it's simple, which means it's usually quicker and less expensive than other ways to divorce.

        While any divorce can be handled as an uncontested divorce, it is best used when there is no house, little personal property, no joint debts to speak of, and no unusual needs involving children.  Even if there are complex issues, if both of you have full information, you might try to work things out between yourselves before either of you see a lawyer and if you can come to agreement you have probably saved thousands of dollars in legal fees.  Or if you can't agree on everything, consider a mediator to help you resolve the differences, with the mediator preparing a draft agreement that an attorney can then reduce to a formal Marital Dissolution Agreement for the court, and this will also save thousands is legal fees.

        But if you are not able to deal with your spouse without being intimidated or feeling bullied or if you are afraid your spouse is not likely to be honest about things in mediation (things like assets and the values of assets and debts, not honest about who they might have been sleeping with -- this is not relevant in trying to agree to the terms of a divorce).

        Although an uncontested divorce generally involves one spouse being represented by a lawyer and the other spouse having no attorney,  both parties can have attorneys to help work out the terms of the agreement.  When only one party has an attorney it creates a power imbalance that takes some attention to deal with.  And no, under no circumstances can one attorney represent both parties in a divorce.  It doesn't matter if you both agree to everything -- under the Rules of Professional Responsibility governing attorney behavior, the attorney can not represent both sides in a divorce.

        But even if you and your spouse are not going to be able to agree to an uncontested divorce, there are other ways to hold down costs if you try to stay in control of the divorce.

Think about Mediation         In mediation, both of you meet with an impartial third party, the mediator, who guides both of you through the process of resolving the issues that have to be decided so you  can complete your divorce.  You can mediate even if your conflict level is so high you can't speak to each other without fighting.  Professional divorce mediators are trained to expedite and reframe issues to keep both of you focused on the task of resolving their divorce... and if needed the mediator will conduct the mediation with the two of you being is different rooms and shuttling back and forth between the two of you.  There are ways to try to work things out if you are both willing to try and are both dealing with each other honestly.

        If one spouse has a pattern of intimidating the other or if one or both of you are being dishonest about marital assets, or if you simply have not yet fully disclosed all of the financial and asset information, then mediation is pointless.  Actually its worse than pointless since if you ga ahead with the divorce when you concealed assets from your spouse, your ex-spouse can later take you back to court for fraud, with far worse results for you and with very serious legal expenses.  If you have not shared the information, you might try checking the following pages and working through the suggested items:
2J-Taking Inventory -- List Assets & Debts; 2J1-Inventory Form -- Assets & Debts Worksheet; 2J2-Budget Form -- Income & Expenses Worksheet; 2J3-Personal Information Worksheet; 2L-Divorce Checklist; and to generally look at 2K-Divorce Manual (from the American Association of Matrimonial Lawyers, long, download & print).

        Mediation not only usually significantly reduces the cost and time of divorce, it also result is much greater satisfaction for the parties, and reduces the likelihood they will later return to court later to ask the court to make changes in the divorce.
In Adversarial Divorce . . . there are still ways to hold down costs, though as soon as you get into the adversarial process, you are generally taking about meaningful costs, and if your spouse has assets and income and you do not, you may well be able to force your spouse to pay for most or even all of your legal costs, even for necessary experts or other costs of preparing the case for trial.

Use Lawyer Time Efficiently         Lawyers charge by the hour... and they charge a lot for the hour... and they charge for everything they do, even picking up the phone to answer your question about whether they got the documents they dropped by the office, and they generally charge what is called a "minimum billing unit" no matter how briefly they are doing something on your case and that "minimum billing unit" is often as much at a quarter of an hour (what this means is that if your attorney is charging $160 an hour and you call to say, "Did you get the copy of the apartment lease I dropped by your office?" and the attorney says "Yes" and you say "Okay, that's all, bye," you just got billed $40 for about 45 seconds of time).  Without arguing the merits of the "minimum billing unit" (much of it has to do with averaging and dealing with interruptions), there are ways to deal with it.

        Try talking to office staff whenever they can address your question, and try to call only when it is urgent or when you have several matters you can address at one time.  Even then it is often best if you call the attorney's staff to schedule a call so your attorney can have your file out and in hand when discussing your case with you.

        To minimize the time your attorney spends on your case, ask yourself, "Is there anything my lawyer is doing that I or someone else could be doing?"  And continue asking the question periodically as the process moves forward.  Even ask your attorney out loud instead of just asking yourself.

        Resist the urge to call your lawyer to complain of your spouse's latest outrage -- call a friend or counselor to let of steam instead.  Then, only after you have calmed down, distill the relevant facts down to a one-page memo your lawyer can read and file for reference.  This is not only a less expensive way of doing things, it gives your attorney something to be put in the file for later reference when it otherwise might be forgotten.

        If information needs to be gathered, do as much of the work as possible.  When your lawyer asks you for information, take an extra minute to find out how it will be used -- this will help you gather things more effectively, organize the information to save the lawyer time, and perhaps even prepare a written summary of it for the lawyer's use.

Think Strategically         It's tempting to look at the divorce as the stage to play out all of your grievances against your spouse and let the world know how blameless you are and how worthless they are, getting caught up in the fight and being determined to come out the "winner."  When you do this any concession feels like defeat.  And attorneys can help you wage this kind of fight... but often the only winners are the attorneys who collect massive legal fees.

        You need to focus clearly on exactly what is worth fighting for and what is not, always keeping clear what your goals are and keeping in mind that you may well not get everything you want, even if you take everything to trial.  Your attorney can tell you what the outcome would likely be if you go to court, and what it will likely cost to take the divorce to the next step (a deposition, discovery requests, an accountant to audit records, an appraiser to determine property value, a settlement conference, drafting a proposed Marital Dissolution Agreement, hiring a private investigator, interviewing possible witnesses and preparing the witnesses for trial, getting a professional to prepare an evaluation for child custody, getting a guardian ad litem to represent the interests of the children, filing additional motions, trial itself.  In the right case everyone of these things, and more, may be proper.... and may cost each of you $10,000 (or more) for the divorce.  Make sure you know what you are fighting over and what that fight is costing so you can weigh the value of the issue and the probability of winning against the cost of the fight.

        You need to review three questions repeatedly during the process: (1) How much is this issue worth to me in money terms? (2) How likely is it that I will win? (3) How much is it costing me to argue about it?  If you can't answer all three questions in a way that makes it clear you should continue the fight, it's time to talk with your lawyer about conceding that issue.  See Deciding Which Issues to Fight in Divorce, and Most Common Mistakes in Divorce.

        Child custody is one issue that really does not work with this kind of analysis, but even here you do need to step back to ask whether the issues you are arguing over are worth the cost of a custody fight (and the cost is far more than just the money, it is the effect it will have later on you and the other parent getting along regarding visitation or any other child care issue, and the cost it will have on the child feeling he or she is in the middle and being emotionally torn apart, and the way it will sour each of you about the other to such an extent that your spouse may later try to poison your child's mind against you).  Are you really doing it for your children... or for your own ego.  Or worse are you doing it because someone else wants you to or because you think society will expect it.  Custody fights are terrible for kids, and before you but a child through one you need to make certain there is a very good reason beyond your own ego.

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