0220: Do You Need A Divorce Attorney‪?‬ Divorce and Your Money - #1 Divorce Podcast

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In this episode and the next several episodes, I want to discuss divorce attorneys, and family law attorneys, and the details and choices amongst them. And how you can figure out whether or not you have a good attorney, how to find a good attorney to make sure your attorney is fighting for and advocating for you and the complexities of the attorney selection and just relationship management process. I'm a huge fan of divorce attorneys and having them help represent you, but like in all industries, there are people who are really good at their job and some people who, let's just say, politely, may need some improvement. And attorneys are no different. There are some excellent family law attorneys out there who will do a good job for you at a reasonable price. And there are some attorneys out there who will cause a mess of things, and you end up spending tens of thousands of dollars or more. And on top of that, not getting anything done. And I want you to avoid that scenario.
But in this particular episode, I want to focus on, do you need an attorney? And what situations that might exist where you don't need an attorney to help you. And let's just start with the basics. Do you need one? Well, your attorney is going to have, if you work with one, is probably going to have one of the biggest impacts in terms of how this divorce process goes for you. And same is the selection of the attorney of your spouse. A good attorney or good set of attorneys, will keep things moving forward at a reasonable clip people will, of course, have disagreements, this is divorce, but they'll do them civilly and you won't end up spending more money and time and energy than you have to. And if you get a bad attorney, this process is going to be an additional nightmare on top of nightmares. Not only will you lose a lot in your divorce, and when I say lose a lot, I mean, money, time, energy, but the outcome will likely be pretty poor as well.
And so, you need to be very careful about who you choose as an attorney. And so, it's one of the most important things that you can do when it comes to the divorce process. But some people ask me, I get this question all the time is, "Do I need an attorney or can I do it myself?" And I know a lot of people are hesitant to fork over thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to an attorney to help with their issues. And sometimes, I get people who'll say, "Well, my issues are pretty simple. I think I can handle most of this." And a lot of times I'll talk to you and say, "Yeah, you have a pretty good handle on things, but you should still consult an attorney or at least consider it." And there are other times where people don't really need that much legal help because they and their spouse agree on most of the issues.
And so, can they do it themselves? A few things I tell people when it comes to whether or not they need an attorney. The first thing, of course, is that divorce is complicated. There are a lot of details in order to come up with a divorce settlement, a divorce agreement, or ultimately if you are one of the handful of people who has to go to trial. I mean, there's a lot of details involved even in the simplest of situations. And you need to be prepared to have a handle on that and understand all of those complexities. The second thing is, it's very, very easy to make mistakes in the divorce process. The mistakes that people think of, which are, are they getting the right financial deal for them? Did they structure a custody agreement the right way? Are they doing what's within the bounds of the law when they come up with an agreement? Those are common things.
But there are also issues where did you fill out that divorce paperwork the right way? And is the clerk going to reject it? And you have to reject it after 60 days of it sitting there in the office and say, Oh, you didn't fill this out correct