Uncontested Divorce in Pacific Grove
Uncontested Divorce in Pacific Grove California
Divorce Like a PRO in Pacific Grove
If you’re facing an uncontested divorce in Pacific Grove, California, you ought to be aware of a beneficial new development in the California family law industry. It can readily save you around $2000 while drastically reducing the possibility of things going wrong in your no-contest divorce .
An uncontested divorce is just a divorce where you and your spouse/partner are substantially in agreement. It may not be that the two of you are in agreement on all issues in your case. You both certainly don’t have to be happy about the divorce or with each other. It does mean that the spouse who does not file the case will not file a Response to contest the divorce on any issue, whether major or minor.
The large majority of filed divorces in California are uncontested cases. They do not require a trial or court hearing. They rarely require mediation. There will be a possibility for a small amount of negotiations between the spouses – probably pre-filing, or even after filing if unexpected problems do arise, providing that the negotiations mean that you and your spouse get back into substantial agreement.
Uncontested Divorce Consumers Have Not Been Well Served in Pacific Grove California
Uncontested divorce in Pacific Grove, California is almost entirely a matter of preparing, serving and/or filing three large batches of complex multi-page legal forms that must be prepared correctly and then be filed and served correctly and all of this must be done in the specified time frames. Additionally, in your specific case, a separate county layer of local Superior Court policies and rules must also be followed perfectly to avoid rejection by the court of your final judgment documents.
So divorce form preparation and the provided written instructions on how to serve and file the documents are super important in no-contest California divorce cases. Legal advice or special pleadings from lawyers are only rarely needed, but excellent document preparation, document review, case-specific written instructions and expert client support are needed and are of utmost importance to your success in your own no-contest Pacific Grove divorce.
Until recently, your biggest problem in an uncontested California divorce would have been that traditionally, at least since the start of the Internet, no-contest divorce consumers in Pacific Grove have not been well served by the various service providers available in the family law industry.
You would have been at the complete mercy of these somewhat un-sympathetic and hard-nosed businesses. Those categories of businesses would be California attorneys and unlicensed and un-regulated online divorce mills. Most of the divorce mills are out-of-state. A few are in India or have some portions of their service, such as document preparation and client support, provided from India. So why not just avoid those two categories of businesses? That seems clear, right? But then you would need another option. And there hasn’t been another option – UNTIL NOW.
Now, for the first time since the Internet, you have another option. But let’s look now at why we want to avoid traditional full representation California attorneys and unlicensed and mostly incompetent and fraudulent online divorce mills who are clueless about the policies and rules at your local county Superior Court.
Avoid Traditional Lawyer Fees
Uber, AirBnB, Home Advisor, Thumbtack, UpWork, Fiverr and Amazon. These are all platforms that match consumers looking in specific industries with local product or service providers in those same specific industries. But who does a prospective Pacific Grovedivorce consumer contact to be matched with a divorce professional who will fit her uncontested divorce case, not overcharge her, not screw up her case and not up-sell her forever?
If you go to Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, LegalZoom, Yelp or the Google 3-pack on a Google search engine page or any other lawyer directory, you are simply spinning the roulette wheel of local family law attorneys. You will have to select from local attorneyswho will all look and sound alike. Look 
at their websites. They all make the same un-verifiable claims of how swell they are. Almost none of them say anything that will convince you that they actually understand the difficulties you are going through. Very few of them will even attempt to tell you what it is they will do for you in your divorce case. They don’t want you to know what they will be doing for you. You’d never hire them if you knew what they were going to do for you. Their only tactic pre-hiring is to instill fear in you about what will happen if you don’t hire them. These are some hard-nosed professionals.
How can you possibly tell those deceptive attorneys apart, much less pick the one lawyer that will be best for your case?
Their retainer fees, even in an uncontested divorce, will be in the range of $2500 to $3500. And those are just retainers. Their final goal will be to up-sell you to at least $5000 – just for an uncontested divorce involving a few hours of work.
And don’t think that un-bundled document review services offered by lawyers will be a solution. Un-bundled services have been around a long time now, but very few California lawyers offer them or even want to discuss them with you. Think about that. If you were an average California family law lawyer getting one or two $3500 cases per month would you want to trade those for one or two $800 cases? Un-bundled services are the best-kept secret among California attorneys.
Avoid High Risk Unlicensed Out-of-State Online Divorce Mills
So after receiving two or three outrageous $2500 fee quotes from attorneys for your simple uncontested divorce and being threatened by them as to what will happen if you don’t hire them, you will next likely gravitate towards the second option for uncontested California divorce. Those are the two dozen or so online divorce mills that offer non-lawyer no-contest divorce papers preparation online in the California market. You fill in an online divorce interview from the comfort of your home and office. Very convenient. You don’t have to complete a 25-page questionnaire in someone’s waiting room. But you are still the source of all data in your case. So that is quite empowering to you in your own divorce. So that’s good. And the power of wicked-cool online divorce software crunches the vast California divorce procedure and huge paperwork load.
So what’s wrong with this second alternative? Well, there’s nothing at all wrong with online divorce. It’s the best option for an uncontested divorce in Pacific Grove, California.
The danger in the second alternative is that the con-men who run these online divorce mills have no idea what they are doing. They certainly don’t know the local rules and policies of your county’s Superior Court. They will defraud you into hiring them with fake testimonials and self-owned online divorce “review” websites. They’ll tell you their fees are “complete” when in fact they are only for the first 30 days. They’ll hit your credit card every month after the first month until you cancel. They will ALSO up-sell you every chance they get for things they call “premium” or “expedited” services, even though they told you up-front that everything was “complete” and “immediate.”.
Don’t take our word for all of that. If you are considering hiring an out-of-state online divorce mill at $139, $149, $159 or $299, check their Better Business Bureau pages first. 3 of the 4 biggest divorce mills in the California market have dozens and dozens of complaints and an F rating from the BBB.
Here’s what happened when a Forbes journalist made the mistake of hiring one of the worst online divorce mills. She was quoted $139 as a “complete” fee. She ended up paying $450 and never got her divorce. They screwed up her case so badly that, at the end of her article, she was seriously considering having to hire an attorney to clean up the mess. And this happens all the time. These are NOT cheap divorces.
The divorce mills are untouchable. You have no recourse when they screw up your case or you realize that the additional fees will never stop. Many of these divorce mills are out of the country and can’t be touched by US law enforcement. They will simply keep your money and laugh at you. The Forbes journalist could not even understand what the Indian divorce mill employee was saying when she called to complain.
And they won’t care about your BBB or Yelp complaints. They’ve got dozens or hundreds of those. Fraud and up-selling pays much better than any harm you can do to them by complaining. And they’ve all got new websites being warmed up for when their current websites get too bad a reputation. They just switch websites, add an extra fraud or two and keep going. In the meantime, you’ll be back to hiring a lawyer to clean up their mess in your simple no-contest divorce.
Suddenly, A New Trend in California Uncontested Divorce
So that has been the sad state of affairs in uncontested California divorce since about 2000. You got screwed by high lawyers’ fees or you got screwed by the fraud and incompetence of out-of-state con-men.
But there is now a third alternative in California uncontested divorce. It’s called Online Divorce PRO and it comes from an almost forgotten profession – Legal Document Assistants (LDA’s). Until 20000, LDA’s used to be called Independent Paralegals.
LDA’s are legally qualified professionals who are licensed by and bonded in the California county in which they have their primary office. They are subject to a strict code of ethics and to serious continuing legal education requirements, just like lawyers. They are trained and skilled in all legal document preparation, including divorce, just like attorneys.
But because they don’t provide legal advice, which you won’t need in a simple no-contest divorce, and don’t represent you in court, which you also won’t need, they charge about $2000 less than a attorney for a simple no-contest divorce.
Legal Document Assistants are sometimes {called}referred to as} “main street paralegals,” because they will generally have public access offices – often down by the Superior Court in your local county seat. So unlike out-of-state online divorce con-men, you can actually make an appointment to go see your LDA should that be necessary. She is right in your local area.
LDA’s have websites to promote their businesses, but they have generally been lagging in using online divorce software and other hi-tech tools. In the past, they would set you an appointment, email or hand you a 25-page questionnaire and set an appointment for you to bring it in when you’ve completed it. Then they’d prepare your divorce papers manually and they’d be ready in 2 or 3 days.
Well, now Online Divorce PRO has introduced them to online divorce software, and they like it. Local LDA’s in Pacific Grove are now using online divorce software to fight back against the online con-men.
After you hire your LDA, s/he will create an Online Divorce PRO account for you. You’ll receive an account opening email with a user id and a temporary password. You’ll log into your LDA’s client login portal. Change your password to your own secure password. Then complete the Online Divorce PRO interview from the comfort of your home or office.
All data is saved via an encrypted connection to our secure state-of-the-art servers in Denver. Your personal data does not get sent by email to someone’s grandmother in Mumbai for her neighbor to copy it onto your divorce papers, which are then re-emailed back to who knows where.
The Online Divorce PRO interview has built-in contextual help, but your LDA is always standing by to answer questions – just a phone call away. When you are finished with the online interview (typical time is 30-90 minutes across 2 or 3 sessions, depending on what’s involved in the case), your LDA is automatically activated to download your fully prepared divorce papers for review. Then depending on what level of service you purchased, you will either meet with your LDA in-person to review your prepared docs or your divorce papers will be checked and emailed to you with instructions on how to file and serve.
Get the Best of Both Worlds in California Uncontested Divorce
Keep in mind that all Online Divorce PRO Legal Document Assistants are independently owned and operated. So each will set their own fees and the specific service packages they offer. Fees will depend on what is involved in your case – in terms of minor children, property, debt, etc. and whether you want to handle your own filing at court. However, almost all LDA’s will offer flat fees somewhere in the range of $400 to $700 for a simple no-contest divorce. You choose which service package you want. You will always know your full fee upfront and exactly what is included.
Divorce is tough enough already. You do not need any added stress from lawyer’s fees or incompetent out-of-state online divorce mills. Get the Best of Both Worlds – an online divorce by a local California licensed Legal Document Assistant in your town.
Complete the form above to be contacted with a free no-obligation quote by your local LDA.