Do want a lawyer to review documents that you prepared using an online divorce website? I’m an uncontested divorce lawyer in Illinois, and people often contact me with that request. Check out this FAQ about a lawyer reviewing uncontested divorce paperwork in Illinois.
Do you review divorce paperwork?
Yes, we can review online divorce paperwork. The services we offer can include the following:
- A consultation during which we review documents
- Notes with a critique of online divorce documents
- Rewriting portions of online divorce documents
- Listing missing documents
- Identifying documents
Most of the time “divorce papers” that people get online are garbage.
An uncontested divorce in Illinois can be fast, and affordable. But you should use an uncontested divorce lawyer in Illinois – not shady divorce website owned by a foreign company.
What does it cost for a lawyer to review uncontested divorce documents?
We offer a flat fee to review documents as a consultation. Generally speaking, the fee is a couple hundred dollars, or less. But we’d have to speak first to give an exact quote, because some uncontested divorces are more complicated than others, and different people want different results from their consultations.
The divorce websites guaranteed my documents would be accepted. So I’m ready to go, right?
How can I put this . . .
NO
Many people who want an uncontested divorce in Illinois get fooled by online divorce websites. They have a bunch of grantees. They guarantee that your documents will be accepted, or you get your money back. Seems good, right?
But it’s a trap!
Just because you can get an uncontested divorce using online divorce documents, that doesn’t mean you should. If your settlement agreement fails to protect you properly, you might be able to still get divorced. And you might also have a lot of problems down the line, years after the divorce.
Don’t you think something is peculiar when a divorce website offers documents for every state?
Did you know that the law varies from state-to-state? How does that one website offer legal agreement drafting that suits laws in all 50 states?
Did you know that different counties require different documents? How is it that a divorce website will be able to produce every document required in every county in every state? That’s crazy.
What papers do I need?
One thing you should know is that getting a divorce is a lot more than having “the right papers.”
The most important documents in a divorce are the settlement documents that contain all the terms of the divorce. For example, the following:
- Marital settlement agreement (MSA): This contains all the financial terms of the divorce, such as dividing assets and debts, child support, and spousal maintenance (aka “alimony”).
- Judgment for allocation of parenting responsibilities: Contains all the terms regarding parenting, for topics previously referred to as child custody, and visitation.
How soon can you review my documents?
Most likely we can review your online divorce documents within one week. An uncontested divorce should be simple, and the documents should be simple. That being said, whatever online divorce website produced your documents probably ripped you off, because they are probably very low quality, totally omit certain clauses, and otherwise expose you to risk after your divorce.
I have all the documents, can you just get a court date for me?
Many people contact me and thing they have everything done – but they cannot figure out how to get a court date.
They want an Illinois uncontested divorce lawyer to get a court date for them. However, lawyers aren’t just schedulers – so we don’t offer date setting.
The problem is that when people call and just want a lawyer to “get a date,” the assumption is that the documents are 100% ready, and all the lawyer has to do is mess around with the court’s scheduling system.
But a good uncontested divorce lawyer does not put his or her name on a case, then use documents produced by some shady divorce website.
What happens after you review the uncontested divorce documents?
There are a number of options, such as the following:
- You can hire us as your uncontested divorce lawyer to do everything the right way
- You can try to correct all the documents yourself, and file yourself
- You can hire anyone else to help you out.