How to Help Keep Your Divorce Legal Fees Down

You’ve decided to divorce, and now you want to know how you can help keep your divorce legal fees down. Divorces with complex alimony, property division, and custody issues are more involved than in more straightforward divorces.

However, some complex divorces are significantly shorter than some substantively straightforward divorces.

Why?

More than anything, the level of cooperation or conflict between the spouses impacts divorce legal fees. 

Read on for how to keep legal fees down.

Determine Your Goals and Stay Focused On Them

Divorce is a legal mechanism with tremendous power to change your life for the positive. Leaving an unhappy marriage for a better future is transformative.

Determining your goals is critical to designing your divorce itself.  Even more importantly, determining your goals in advance is vital to ensuring your divorce is geared towards creating the life you want post-divorce. Your continued, laser-like focus on your big picture also keeps attorneys’ fees down.

Don’t get swept up in the minutiae of divorce and allow it to distract you from your big, meaningful goals. Make those decisions in the context of the things that really matter to you. For example, does an hour difference in pick up and drop off really matter, or does having substantial, quality time with your children matter?

Keep yourself focused on the big picture (such as financial stability) rather than aggravating annoyances (a bill your spouse paid late). Make a physical list of your overarching goals in a secure, private location, and refer to it when you feel yourself getting agitated and sweating the small stuff.

Not coincidentally, this is the key to a positive divorce experience . . .

Read:  How to Have a Good Divorce

Read: When Reality Doesn’t Match Up With Your Vision

Communicate Effectively With Your Spouse

After your goals, two spouses’ ability to communicate effectively (effectively — not perfectly) is crucial to having the best divorce possible. Although you cannot control your spouse’s communication, you are 100% in charge of how you communicate (and respond).

Mediation and collaborative divorce are two ways to encourage communication and negotiation right from the beginning of the divorce. The spouses’ reasonableness and communication are also huge drivers of litigation attorneys’ fees.

For five tips to communicate effectively with your spouse . . .

Read: Don’t Add Fuel to the Fire: Five Tips for Smoother Communication During Divorce

If you have a high conflict spouse . . .

Read: How Do I Handle a High Conflict Spouse During Divorce

Read: Using EAR Statements to Solve Problems With Your Ex During Divorce

Hire Divorce and Family Law Attorneys

There are many good reasons to hire a lawyer experienced with divorce and family law rather than a generalist. For example, we’ve all heard the expression “jack of all trades, master of none.”

One of them is that a lawyer highly familiar with divorce and family law is more efficient than a lawyer who has to switch gears from a criminal matter or a real estate closing.

At Freed Marcroft, this is one of the reasons our lawyers limit their practice to divorce and family law. We believe in getting really, really good at one thing. It’s the difference between “an inch wide and a mile deep” and “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

Plus, it allows us to include lawyers on our team who are trained and experienced in mediation, collaborative divorce, and litigation so that we can offer you whatever process best fits your goals.

Read: How to Have an Amicable Divorce

Read: Settlement & Divorce

Help Us Utilize Your Divorce Paralegals

Not every member of your legal team has the same hourly rate.  At Freed Marcroft, we allocate work so that it’s done by the most efficient member of your team for that purpose. Our paralegals bill at a lower hourly rate than our attorneys.

If you have a question, you can help us by contacting your paralegal first. Freed Marcroft paralegals are experienced family law paralegals and can provide many answers themselves. They are also our resident air traffic controllers. Your paralegal will identify when an attorney is the best fit to help you with your question and, if so, get you scheduled to speak.

Plus, because attorneys are often in court and paralegals are mainly in the office, they not only help you get correct answers but also get them to you quickly.

Read: When Reality Doesn’t Match Up With Your Vision

Read: ADR & Divorce

Be Streamlined in Your Attorney Communications

We have already talked about keeping your focus on the things that really matter and calling your paralegals first.

Legal teams bill for their time, so the more streamlined you can be in your communications with your team, the better – for example, consolidating multiple topics into one email, call, or meeting and getting documents and information over to your team when they request them saves time and, therefore, legal fees.

At Freed Marcroft, we are continually building out our complimentary library of client resources to help give clients insights and an overview of different parts of the divorce process. Plus, this blog contains tons of information to help you learn more about what is coming next in your divorce and what to expect and also sets you up to have a more streamlined conversation with your legal team that’s focused on your priorities.

Don’t withhold information from your legal team — but ask them what’s important and relevant and then share it efficiently.

Read: Should I Tell My Divorce Lawyer Everything?

Read: Don’t Mistake Truth for Weakness: It’s Strength

Next Steps

Nothing about divorce is “one size fits all,” including the legal fees involved. That said, the things that prolong a divorce and make it financially and emotionally expensive and time-consuming generally look similar from case to case.

For more information about how to keep your divorce legal fees down, please get in touch with us here. For more information on Connecticut divorce and family law, check out our Divorce Information and Facts. Also, please reach out if you have questions or want to learn more about how our team of divorce attorneys can help you with your custody or Post Judgment issue.

Updated September 4, 2024