Over the last 25 years, I have personally advised thousands of people in the Chattahoochee Valley about the best way to proceed with their divorces.
My first priority in the initial consultation is to figure out what you need and what you want.
Do you want a simple uncontested divorce? Will your circumstances force you into fully contested divorce litigation? Do you need help deciding how to proceed?
When you hire us for your uncontested divorce, this is what we do:
- I meet with you and take the pertinent information we need that will allow us to make a decision about how to proceed with your case.
- I explain to you some basic laws in Georgia regarding marital property, support, and child custody.
- We discuss whether there is a reasonable possibility that we will be able to draw up an agreement for an uncontested divorce that your spouse will sign.
- If, together, we decide to proceed with an uncontested divorce, we will draft all the documents you need for your uncontested divorce.
- Ordinarily, in our uncontested divorce proceeding, it is our client’s responsibility to get the spouse’s signature on the divorce documents. This is the key to holding our costs down. We don’t typically negotiate with your spouse or appear in court when we are hired for an uncontested divorce action.
- In an uncontested divorce proceeding, we prepare the documents you need, you obtain your spouse’s signature and then you return the documents to our office.
- We file the documents with the Clerk of the Superior Court and we pay the filing fee*.
- We are required by law to wait at least 31 days after filing your divorce petition before we may move forward with finalizing your divorce.
- At the conclusion of the mandatory waiting period, we will prepare an affidavit for you to sign, in which you request the Court to execute a Final Judgment and Decree of Divorce.
- We will then take the entire package of documents to the Judge for signature.
- After the Judge signs the documents, we file the Final Judgment and Decree of Divorce with the Clerk’s office and your divorce is complete.
For more information about whether an uncontested divorce action is appropriate for you, please call our office and make an appointment for an initial consultation. I will soon be posting more information about our policies and procedures.
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*When you are comparing costs of different attorneys’ uncontested divorce actions, it is important to know exactly what you are paying for. Some very low-cost uncontested divorce packages do not include items such as the court’s mandatory filing fee.