Uncontested divorce is the way most people divorce. It's simple and inexpensive, and it offers you and your spouse the chance to end your marriage quietly and with dignity. It's not right for everybody, but it's right for many more couples than some lawyers like to admit.

The more time I spend with my clients, people like you who are actually going through this painful process of divorce, the more convinced I become that uncontested divorce is an appropriate way to end a marriage once it is clear that it has failed and reconciliation is simply not possible. 

Advantages of Uncontested Divorce

The most obvious advantage of uncontested divorce, of course, is its cost. Generally, an uncontested divorce that stays uncontested is almost always the least expensive way of getting divorced. I'm a big believer in finding the least expensive way to divorce. The simple fact is that any money you can avoid spending on the lawyers is money you can use to live on after divorce, pay on your debts or spend on your kids.

The low cost is not, however, the only advantage of uncontested divorce. If the level of conflict between you and your spouse is low now, uncontested divorce offers a way to keep it that way. It's also private. The agreements the two of you reach in an uncontested divorce and file with the court will, of course, be a matter of public record, but the disclosures you make to each other don't have to be. Nor do the various proposals you discuss as you negotiate an agreement that's acceptable to both of you. To further protect your privacy and credit, we never disclose account numbers or social security numbers in any of the paperwork that we file with the Court for our clients. Often, in a contested case, your disclosures are filed with the Court and contain an incredible amount of extremely private information that, in the wrong hands, can do you a tremendous amount of harm. 

Another very big advantage of an uncontested divorce is that it is relatively fast.  There is a required 31 day waiting period for most divorces to be granted in Georgia but we have completed divorce cases from initial consultation to final decree in as little as 5 weeks, including the waiting period.  Not all cases can be completed that quickly.  However, the average completion time for an uncontested case at our firm is between 8 and 9 weeks. On the other hand, we estimate that the average time for us to complete a contested divorce case in our firm to be about 6 months or perhaps a little longer.  

When It's a Bad Idea

Believe it or not, in my experience, you do not have to agree with each other about the issues of your divorce for an uncontested divorce to be right for you. It's not so much a question of agreement as it is your desire to get through your divorce, and a practical sense on the part of both of you that you want to minimize the cost badly enough to stop fighting, stay in control, and end your marriage.

If you and your spouse do not yet agree on all the issues of your divorce, that just means you may have some negotiating to do before you finish it. If neither of you gets rattled or gets in a hurry, you'll probably be able to get through it. Mediation is often a good tool to use to work through the difficult issues on which you have been unable to agree.  Generally, if one party is completely opposed to the idea of divorce at all or if you cannot discuss all issues with your spouse in a reasonably businesslike way, you will probably not be able to have an completely uncontested divorce.  If you are unable to work out a complete agreement, you can always let the judge decide.  But, that takes both time and money and the decisions are made by someone who simply may not understand your concerns and problems as well as you (or your spouse) do. 

How It Works

The first thing you need to know about uncontested divorce is that the lawyer you get to do your uncontested divorce cannot represent both of you. As a society, we assume that the spouses in a divorce have necessarily different interests. The ethical principles for lawyers therefore require that a lawyer cannot represent both parties. The lawyer must represent one of you and not the other. The lawyer will need to know at the outset which of you is his or her client and which of you is not.

One of the many reasons that our firm created this web site is to help potential clients learn about divorce before they meet with us. That allows them to minimize the time they spend with our staff -- to keep the cost down and make the process shorter.

We meet with the spouse who is to be our client either by phone or in person.  While we may answer questions over the internet via email, we usually do not do email only consultations.  It is simply not efficient and it takes too much time (from everyone). We work together to think through the key issues involved with the divorce, and we explain to our clients what each document does and the various options available.

After we produce the documents (including the settlement to be proposed to the other spouse), if the client needs to make changes to them, that is no problem. Everything is on computer so it is easy to make changes, as long as the parties can agree on what they ought to be.

It is up to the client to present the proposed settlement to the other spouse.  That is another way we keep the costs down for our clients. When both spouses are satisfied with the papers, they sign the documents and they are then filed with the court. Many times, depending on the county and the judge, neither spouse has to go to court at all. As much as possible, everything is handled on paper, through the mail. 

If both spouses want to come together to meet with us, that is always acceptable. We just insist that we all be very clear about which spouse is our client and which spouse is not. We do not give any advice to the spouse who is not our client but encourage them to contact another lawyer if he or she has any questions or needs specific advice.  However, we will explain the divorce process in general to both our client and the spouse. 

Uncontested divorce can happen faster than most people realize. If our client comes prepared with all the key information, and if the two parties are able to agree on the key issues, we can usually produce the necessary paperwork within a week or so and the divorce can be concluded in about two months. The better organized you and your spouse are and the more that you have discussed and agreed on the important issues in your divorce, the faster and easier your case will be. 

How Much It Costs

The prices for uncontested divorce vary widely. We know of attorneys who charge as much as $3,000 for an uncontested divorce, and there are others who advertise uncontested divorces for as little as $99.

In general, the lawyer who charges $99 is likely to have organized his or her practice around an extremely high volume of divorces, spends little time with individual clients, and he or she will expect to increase the fee if children are involved, if any significant assets or unusual debts are involved, or if anything else about the divorce requires that he or she spend significant time on the case. In fact, for $99, it is unlikely that the lawyer even works on your case and certainly will not represent you in court and prepare all of the necessary documents for you. On the other hand, the lawyer who charges $2,500.00 probably doesn’t do very many uncontested divorces, and expects to spend a significant amount of time with his or her client. However, you do not necessarily get a better quality of representation by paying a higher fee.  Remember, one of the main objectives in an uncontested divorce is to save you money. 

Who Gets Represented

Generally, the person that we represent will be the plaintiff, the one "asking" for the divorce. If it's offensive to either of you to be the one who asks for the divorce in the legal documents, that may settle the question right there. For most divorcing couples, though, neither spouse has a strong objection to being the plaintiff. If that's the case with you, it frees you up to focus on the practical considerations. However, we offer consultation and advice services to the defendant, the party who is not asking the court for the divorce but realizes that it is inevitable and wants to make sure that his or her interests are adequately considered in the settlement. 

Disadvantages of Uncontested Divorce

The first disadvantage of an uncontested divorce flows from its very simplicity. If, for example, you and your spouse hold joint title to real property or owe money jointly, or if your children have unusual parenting needs, resolving them in uncontested divorce may be awkward or even impossible.  These can be very difficult problems but we solve most of these problems in our firm and still manage to have an uncontested divorce. 

The second disadvantage of uncontested divorce arises from the way the law looks at the role of the lawyer in divorce. Like it or not, the law sees divorce as an adversarial contest between you and your spouse. Because a lawyer must not represent two parties who are competing with each other, the lawyer cannot represent both of you. He or she must represent either you or your spouse. In an uncontested divorce, that means the other party will not have a lawyer at all unless he or she hires one individually. That may not be a bad idea because it helps to correct a possible imbalance of power between the spouses, but it increase the overall cost of the divorce. 

Safeguards for the Unrepresented Spouse