As a divorce lawyer in Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will, Kendall and Kane counties, my goal is to help people get an affordable and relatively fast divorce.
If you are like most sane people – you don’t like to spend money on lawyers. Heck, I don’t, and I’m a lawyer. I’ve found that many married who want to get an affordable divorce are tempted into the dark realm of what is often referred to as “online divorce” – basically a website that will spit out papers that put your future at risk. Be warned, the dangers of non-lawyer websites can become apparent years after a divorce. I wrote this article to help you avoid trouble with online divorce scams.
What you get with divorce websites
While some websites are run my lawyers who can actually offer expertise and advice, many “online divorce” websites are not. What they do is ask you for a bit of information, then put that information into forms that it claims will help you get divorced.
Essentially, you will normally get a computer-generated generic form that is most likely no more valuable than something you could have done on your own with an example provided by a legal aid clinic.
See my article titled “Warnings for an Uncontested Divorce.”
Use a lawyer – not a website
I have many clients call me who want an uncontested divorce in various Illinois counties like DuPage, Cook, or Will. Some of them call me after having tried to use a website to prepare their divorce papers, and realizes what they received didn’t seem right. They got off easy.
On client of mine used a website to prepare her papers five years ago. Now, she is in court again with her ex-husband because their marital settlement agreement was so deficient.
Another client of mine tried to do his divorce himself using papers spit out by a website. When he couldn’t figure out what to do after that, he called me. I reviewed his file, and found the website actually produced papers to be filed that contained his and his spouse’s social security number – a major privacy issued and not permitted by law.
A great myth is that a website can divorce you without a trip to court. In Illinois, it cannot!
See my article titled “You ask: Do I need a divorce lawyer?”
Getting started with an uncontested divorce in Illinois
Some lawyers only like big cases where they can bill clients tens of thousands of dollars, with retainers of fifteen thousand dollars are more. Many of those lawyers are very, very good. However, I appreciate the opportunity to efficiently help married people move on to a new stage in life, with an affordable flat fee divorce. See my article titled “Amicable divorce, meet affordable lawyer.”