About Me

Name: Hal Davis

Location: Plano, Texas, United States

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Nothing wrong with forms: I use them myself. Mine cost me $100 a month, every month (so they’re updated continuously), but they’re designed to be used by a lawyer, and the software asks questions a non-lawyer wouldn’t be expected to understand. The State Bar of Texas Family Law Section publishes forms for divorces, but the paper form just for one document, the Final Decree of Divorce, takes up an entire 3-ring binder, over 3 inches thick.

To do a divorce right, you have to know a lot about community property law, contract law (debts and credit cards), family law, retirement and tax laws. The laws are sufficiently diverse, complex, and intertwined that the issues really can’t be boiled to a booklet or video to help you do it yourself. I offer a free Civilized Divorce Guidebook to folks whose mailing address is within 18 miles of my office, but the Guidebook is mostly for helping folks know what sort of options there are in solving problems, and doesn’t even attempt to tell someone what language to use in a divorce decree to solve the problem.

There’s very little opportunity for a “do-over” if you get a judge to sign a Final Decree of Divorce and later find out that you should have done things differently. Ironically, you can usually have a do-over regarding children’s issues (possession schedule, child support, and so forth) than you can with money, property, and debt issues, because the judge generally loses the authority to reopen a property division 30 days after the divorce decree is signed. Example: Owelty Deed.

Clerks at the courthouse, and judges, are PROHIBITED from helping you with your divorce. Nearly any question you’d ask a clerk is calling for legal advice, and clerks aren’t lawyers, so they cannot give legal advice. Judges must remain impartial, and telling someone how to do something would eliminate their impartiality. Judges can’t even tell you what to say to get the judge to sign an agreed divorce.

Anybody who acts as a mediator on a divorce and also draws up the papers for the divorce is either practicing law without a license (a felony), or is in danger of losing his or her law license. Mediators are supposed to be impartial, but drawing up divorce papers cannot be impartial (by Texas Supreme Court ruling).

And most lawyers will simply refuse to meet with a couple (both husband and wife) looking at divorce. It’s a conflict of interest for a lawyer to give legal advice to both sides of a lawsuit, and a divorce is a lawsuit.

Now, having said that, if a divorce is simple enough, you probably can do it yourself. Here’s what I mean by simple enough:

1. Either no minor kids of this marriage, or y’all expect to be agreeable on children’s issues until the children turn 18. If you want the divorce decree to ensure that you have certain rights regarding the children, you’d best have a lawyer draw it up.

2. Property division is a simple “you keep yours and I’ll keep mine”, where you don’t have to decide how to split something, and you’re not moving money out of anybody’s retirement account.

3. Either no real estate, or you plan to sell the house and split the proceeds. If one of you is going to own the home after the divorce, you’ll want a lawyer to draw up those papers.

4. Either no credit card debt, or each of you will be responsible for the balances on the credit cards you personally applied for.

Then, there are things that not only mean you shouldn’t do it yourself, but also mean that you won’t be agreeable, and you’ll both wind up with lawyers, and may have a trial or some hearings:

1. One of you thinks the other one is hiding money or debt

2. You need to deal with something that you don’t know the value of, such as a small business.

3. One of you has addiction issues.

4. One of you can’t be trusted with the children.

5. Generally, you can’t agree on EVERYTHING.

Some form publishers put in some sort of disclosure that the forms are not intended to be a substitute for a lawyer’s advice. And some go on to suggest that you can save a lot of money by drawing up the documents yourself and then paying a lawyer to review them. But I find it takes more attorney time to review someone else’s documents than to prepare them myself. Before I can review your documents, I have to at least mentally prepare the same document, then make sure you have everything in yours that I have in mine, that you didn’t put anything new in, that the way you said things means the same thing as the way I said it, and I have to figure out where you put the parts if they’re in a place where I didn’t put them. And I’m concerned that I have as much legal liability if the document isn’t right as if I had prepared it myself.