Absolutely, anyone can handle his/her divorce without the assistance of legal counsel. The question is not whether you can, but whether you should.
Family courts have departments dedicated to helping individuals fill out the right forms, file them in the proper places with the correct amount of filing fees, et cetera. If you were not married very long, have no children and little or no assets or debts, that may be all you need.
In addition, there are any number of legal aid organizations that will help low income individuals with more complicated divorce matters. If you qualify for such assistance, that too may be sufficient.
However, if you have the resources to pay for legal representation, then you should strongly consider the value that such representation provides. Even if your divorce is fairly simple, and you and your spouse can and will agree to the terms of the divorce up front, having competent, experienced legal counsel draft your settlement agreement and follow your case through to completion will assure that it is handled properly and that you are really divorced when you think you are.
Indeed, there are all too many married individuals who chose to handle their divorce on their own, went through some of the early steps correctly, and then concluded that they were divorced when no divorce decree was ever entered. If the individual who made that honest mistake remarried before actually being divorced, the complications and consequences are immeasurable.
So, assuming you are considering legal representation, what might that cost? That will depend on two things, the billing rate and experience of the attorney you choose and the complexity of your case.
If your case is simple, i.e. no children and little or no assets and/or debts, and you have agreed to all of the terms of dissolution, then your attorney will only need to paper your agreements and get the proper documents filed and served. If your attorney’s billing rate is moderate, your costs should be somewhere between $2,500 and $5,000.
However, if your marriage was a long one, and you have minor children or considerable assets, your case will be what is called “complex” and the costs to litigate it could be significantly greater. Needless to say, the more that’s at stake and the more complex the case, the more important it will be to have competent legal counsel.
Often, one spouse will feel that she/he lacks sufficient resources to hire an attorney because her/his soon to be “ex” controls all of the money. Fortunately, that should not be a concern. The Legislature in its ultimate wisdom has provided a fee shifting statute that requires a spouse with control of the money to pay for the legal fees of the one without, subject to certain restrictions of reasonableness, so as to level the playing field and give each party proper representation and a fair shot at reaching an equitable resolution.
[Every case is different. Nothing in this post or on this site is, nor is it intended to be, legal advice. Please contact me to obtain legal advice regarding your particular situation. Past achievements are not a predictor of future results, and do not constitute a guarantee, warranty, or prediction regarding the outcome that you can expect. No attorney-client relationship can be or will be established until attorney and client have met, discussed the client’s specific needs and expectations and the attorney’s current fee structure, and attorney and client have both signed a written fee agreement.]