The Florida Supreme Court provides all the forms for do it yourself divorce
More than ten years ago the Florida Supreme Court realized that the Florida courts were slammed with more divorce cases than could be handled by the system. No average non-lawyer could navigate the system to get a “No Fault” divorce and the system differed from county to county. Court dockets were backed up with lawyers filing simple uncontested divorces as though they were operating a factory operation. They answer was to make all the forms public, require that each county, circuit and district adopt similar procedures and publicize “Do It Yourself” divorces.
Today anyone can get ALL the forms online and a lot of darned good advise by going to:
http://www.flcourts.org/gen_public/family/forms_rules/index.shtml
Now, if a non-lawyer can print the right forms, fill them out correctly and get them filed, the Clerks Offices around Florida have all set up assistance for people who do not want to or cannot hire an attorney.
The problem that this has created is not new. The Clerk’s cannot give legal advice! And they WILL NOT do so. So if you have a que4stion about how to do it yourself, you either have to look it up online and read through a ton of material, or go down to the courthouse and hope they have a local attorney who will answer questions for $25 or so. Many counties did this. Unfortunately, as the old saying goes “You get what you pay for.” In many cases the attorneys (and some were truly wonderful) were those who could not make a living and needed the little $25 payments to answer questions. Many times people would come in and “ask the lawyer” and find out that it was going to cost several hundreds of dollars to ask ALL the questions that they had, or simply the lawyer did not give such “hot” advice!
Simply put, the only folks who can really benefit from the do-it-yourself system are those who have NO children, NO assets, NO debts, NO real estate and NO need of support, with very short term marriages. In other words – only those people who have nothing and need a very basic and simple divorce – which is about one out of a thousand. For the rest of the people, it is like having them fix their own cars without the proper tools and parts. If you have ever had the experience of waiting in line at the driver’s license bureau or the tag office for an hour or so and then finding out you don’t have the right forms, the do-it-yourself program is even more frustrating. There are way too many forms to wade through and they are very hard to fill out. The clerks requirements before they will accept a filing are almost incomprehensible and once you are in the system – it can take forever to get it finished.
The worst of it comes when people with property and children do it themselves and wind up with a very poorly done divorce, inadequate support, horrible or no visitation work out and agreements that just do not work. The lawyers have a field day with them when they run into problems later on. Then it first costs ten times what it would have cost to have had the darned thing done correctly by a lawyer at the beginning.
So, what’s the answer? A lot of lawyers in the divorce business used to tell do-it-yourself folks – “No Thank” – either have me do it or do it yourself – and nothing in the middle. That is changing. Today, more and more attorneys are willing to draft the agreement, the child support provisions, the property provisions, the deeds, the family plan, etc. and let people take a proper agreement into court themselves. This method saves a bunch of money, keeps the lawyers from litigating the case and provides the expertise people need.
At Jupiter Legal Advocates we are happy to help and will tailor the assistance to your budget. Give us a call for a free consultation.
If you find yourself in such a position it is best to consult an attorney with substantial experience. There are so many different circumstances that a proper answer to your particular problem can only be obtained by a trained and experienced lawyer.
If you have any question regarding this or any other legal matter our firm may be able to help you. Please contact Jupiter Legal Advocates at (561) 748-8000 or email us at [email protected] for further information and assistance. We try our very best to respond immediately.
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JUPITER LEGAL ADVOCATES
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