DIVORCE FORMS: If you have no kids or property to worry about, or are very poor and/or your time is not very valuable to you, it might be worthwhile to use the forms at the bottom of the page. Otherwise please read the disclaimers. Here is just one of my fomer clients who had the "privilege" of coming to me and paying $3,000 in attorney fees to correct a case she and her husband wanted to save money on: first motion to correct errors. The errors in her documents were not discovered until years after the fact: the ex-husband's new spouse "inspired" a new vision of their original, hasty but cheap divorce documents. The original Court gladly signed those first documents because they we're correct in form and I would have signed them if I was the Judge as well. However, given the custody arrangment, there was no accounting within the original support Order for the shared custody both mother and father believed they would be pursuing in the best interests of the children. No automatic adjustments or esclator clauses meant that a support debt slowly and silently accumulated with neither of them knowing about it. (By the way we won the case and I saved my client $17,934. But not after she already paid me over $3,000 in attorney fees for a 100 page motion and had had her credit ruined.

My own documents are drawn up correctly given your real-estate, property, child-support and other aspects of your legal agreement. The one's I provide here are NOT. If you choose to do it alone, you must modify the language. Until that happens they are not going to do what you need. OUR LAW OFFICE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY USE OF THE FORMS LISTED AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE. PLEASE REVIEW THESE WARNINGS PRIOR TO USE. If you file and handle your case yourself you must set a time for a court hearing as a "pro se" party. If you absolutely have no economic means your fumbling will probably just result in an additional trip to the courthouse after being a little embarrased in front of the 20 other couples who are sitting in the back of the courtroom waiting for their turn. If you have no property or kids to divide it gets much less likely you will leave something out or have provisions which are contradictory. However, where child-support or real-estate is at stake there are special risks to creating your own documents. Aside from drafting something that does not divide property in a fully enforceable or correct way, there is a chance that the Court WILL sign your documents despite errors without questioning the import of certain provisions. The result is you sign away what should have been your right and your spouse refuses to sign corrected documents after the fact. YOUR SPOUSE WILL NOT HAVE TO HONOR WHAT THE TWO OF YOU ORIGINALLY INTENDED THE DOCUMENTS TO MEAN UNTIL YOU FILE COSTLY "MOTIONS TO REOPEN". Your case will have been considered finished and you then face an uphill battle get the Court to "reopen" or "vacate" what was supposed to be your "Final Decree of Dissolution". The Court will never stop you and "check" the amount you have agreed on for maintenance or property to make sure it is "fair". If you're lucky, you'll be sent back to try again. The language and procedural format required to conclude a WA state divorce is quite archaic and rather nonsensical when viewed from the standpoint of an agreed divorce these days. In fact, our Northwest variant (involving "findings", petitions, decrees: when there is not much to find and decree about at all) still uses language like "COMES Now, so an so, by and through such and such, and requests the Honorable Court...blah blah". The antiquated procedure and language results in a big headache from the standpoint of most divorces these days; including those involving property. In fact, the language of the pleadings in some places literally mirror the same phrases pecked out by typewriter 70-80 years ago by two of my great-grandfathers who were attorneys! Two of my g.grandfathers were attorneys here in Seattle prior to WWI and much of the pleading and procedure remains the same now when it doesn't need to. Divorce was rare, and culturally less acceptable. Getting a divorce was a major social "event" regardless of the circumstances. The presumptions of our legal inheritance were clear: you had to show why you were etitled to it, deal at length with any possible issue that could arise on an issue by issue basis, and in three separate documents! And your reasons had better be good! Of course we ignore much of the fluff in most cases now: but you still have to comply and file documents in order and hit on all issues correctly. Everyone did it that way before, so we would not dare to consider changing! You still have to testify to the Court about all sorts of stuff nowadays even where: you have a childless marriage of 9 months; and nary one red cent did the parties, they commingle. You can hire me right now and forget about it by quickly reading here about my process and then purchasing with your credit card or PayPal acccount at the Fees page.

The cash-value of these observations is this: I don't know why anyone would do it themselves in this day and age when most can in fact afford to hire an attorney to just do it for them. And this is especially so where you have a decent income and might have child-support or property at issue. I wrote my own software to streamline the process, and reduce attorney time spent on the case to only what is absolutely necessary. The result is $445-350 flat fees for agreed cases plus the filing fee. I would challenge you to find an attorney who truly has a system that can beat mine on either price or quality. There really are none. The do-it-yourself online software systems out there were all built in India and mess your case up in hilarious ways.

Below is a list of commonly used forms in standard practice for most divorce lawyers in Washington State. Of Course much of my legal analysis and pleadings will not be below for proprietary reasons. Yet, some of my friends are surprised at how much I divulge below: there is case law and a motion on how to Nix back support where the other spouse did not have the child but is trying to unfairly collect on a back child support debt. That situation is common: DSHS helping one parent go for child support arrears when the child was in fact living (residing) with the other parent; or spent substantial overnights in the other parent's household. I don't advise you to do your divorce or any contested divorce motion alone, but if you have no money I wish you the best of luch and that the fairness we all hope for is on your side. What is provided below may fit your situations perfectly, or it may not: You're on your own.