Get an online divorce

By Jennifer Mulrean

Last year, an about-to-be-divorced friend remarked that anyone thinking divorce was too easy had never been through the process. Maybe he should have tried getting divorced online.

LegalZoom and CompleteCase are the front-runners of a handful of sites promising completed divorce paperwork -- sometimes instantly -- for thousands of dollars less than the typical offline split. The sites don't just offer blank legal forms for download or general divorce information, as many similar sites and offline do-it-yourself kits do. They help you fill out state-specific divorce forms they guarantee will be accepted by your local courts.

That's not to say you can get a finalized divorce online -- yet.

“Some people think you can go online and meet your future husband or wife and then divorce them the next day. It's not really like that,” says Brian Liu, CEO and co-founder of Los Angeles-based LegalZoom. (Another co-founder is Robert Shapiro, one of O.J. Simpson's defense attorneys.)

“You can't get divorced with the click of a button -- you still have to go through the court system.”

But in counties where you can file by mail or fax, as in all counties in California, it is possible to be divorced without ever setting foot in court or a lawyer's office. (You can check with your county clerk's office to see if they accept filings this way.) Here's how it works.

High-tech solutions to age-old problems

At LegalZoom, you answer a series of questions and the site populates the forms with your answers; you're not looking at the actual divorce documents and trying to make sense of them. LegalZoom also reviews your answers for spelling and grammatical errors and makes sure the final paperwork is formatted to your court's requirements. So if you're filing for divorce in San Diego, Calif., for example, Liu says the documentation you receive from LegalZoom will be on the multicolored paper those courts require. “In other places, the courts might require them to have hole punches at the top or for them to be a specific color of paper. … We take care of all that.”

The completed paperwork arrives in the mail 7-10 days later, ready to be faxed, mailed or trotted down to the courthouse.

At CompleteCase, you're walked through your state's divorce forms question by question, with explanatory text provided. Once finished, you print the documents on your own printer and file them with the appropriate court. You can go back in to edit your responses and reprint the paperwork as many times as you need to. You will need to take care of any filing requirements on your own -- for, say, that pesky colored paper -- though CEO and founder Randy Finney says that hasn't been issue for any of the Seattle company's clients.

LegalZoom, which had its public launch in March 2001, has had 30,000 divorce clients; CompleteCase has had 20,000 since its May 2000 launch.

The price: $249 at CompleteCase or $299 to $349 at LegalZoom. (You'll pay the higher price if you have minor children.) Services start at $199 at OurDivorceAgreement.com. This doesn't include court filing fees, which can vary by county. Compare this to the U.S. average hourly rate of $228 for lawyers, according to the 2002 Survey of Law Firm Economics by Altman Weil Pensa Publications.

(That doesn't mean you'll never find an attorney who can compete with these sites. William Hornsby, staff counsel on the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services, says more and more lawyers are unbundling their services. He says he often sees lawyers advertising their services in Chicago-area newspapers for stripped-down, uncontested divorces for around $200.)

Some words to wise consumers

Both sites promise your paperwork will be accepted by the courts. If it's rejected, LegalZoom will correct your paperwork for free, and CompleteCase will provide a full refund. Unfortunately, while all states accept forms prepared by these services, Liu says that LegalZoom made a “strategic decision” not to offer its services in some states because they made it rather complicated for the do-it-yourselfers. Those states are: Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana and New Hampshire.

The fact that the LegalZoom and CompleteCase sites offer divorce forms specific to your state sets them apart from many sites that simply offer generic forms. And the American Bar Association has cited some consumer concerns about those do-it-all forms -- specifically, the generic divorce forms that don't take into account where you live and don't tell you they're generic, or sites that don't make it possible for you to know the timeliness of their information.

Consumers should note that in February 2003, the ABA's Delivery of Legal Services committee issued a set of guidelines for all online legal sites. Besides dated and generic material that isn't labeled as such, they also cite concerns whether sites provide enough information about jurisdiction, since many legal matters are drastically different from one area to another. (To read more about the ABA guidelines for online legal sites here.)

What online sites can and can't do

No matter where you live, the sites are not designed to help you sort out who gets Junior over school holidays or how to get more money out of your soon-to-be-ex. They're best suited to people who already agree on the basic issues and want to separate assets and lives with as little rigmarole as possible.

If you disagree on the division of assets, child custody, or even the decision to get divorced in the first place, the sites will likely refer you to a lawyer. You may also be referred to a lawyer or accountant if you have a large amount of assets or will be dividing retirement accounts. (Both services offer partner referral services for an added fee.)

Bottom line: You aren't paying for legal advice when you sign up with LegalZoom or CompleteCase. The sites are divorce-document-preparation services, not law firms. As such, they are legally prevented from proffering any legal advice.

“They can answer the question 'How do I do it?' but they can't answer 'what should I do?'” says the ABA's Hornsby.

Should questions arise that the services can't answer, however, they will connect you with a lawyer for an added fee through partner referral services.

“We still say that if you can afford it, hiring an attorney is still the best way to go because you're going to get the full representation,” Liu says.

But CompleteCase's Finney, who has been a practicing attorney for 12 years, says there's a lot to be gained from these services beyond the cost efficiency.

“A lot of people fear contacting a lawyer because they're afraid it will increase the degree of conflict,” he says. “This is a way to complete the process without a lot of conflict and with a greater degree of privacy. In my opinion, an uncontested divorce is vastly better than a contested divorce.”

But what about the other end of the nuptials -- are there any cyber wedding bells in the offing? Neither Liu nor Finney is aware of any state currently allowing online weddings, and Finney was dubious about the idea.

“People say we make it too easy to get divorced, but I think we should make marriage more difficult to enter into,” he says. “I think we should be more wary of getting married online than getting divorced online.”

Jennifer Mulrean is a copy editor and writer on MSN Money. As a freelance writer, Mulrean has written articles for The Seattle Times, The Los Angeles Times and In Style magazine. A graduate of the University of Washington, she also has worked in various editing capacities at the Aspen Daily News in Aspen, Colo. She lives in Seattle.