Free Help Please!

Free divorce help is one of the more common search terms on the internet these days; and for good reason.  Divorce can be really expensive. If you’ve read my other blog post on the costs of divorce, you’ll see how the average divorce can cost as much as a car, and how costs can escalate quickly.  With so many people searching for free, or at least cheaper, help, I thought it would be good to explain some of the “free” and cheaper options for divorce help that are available.

Good Ole’ Internet

First, pretty much all of the articles and blog posts on the internet are free.  You can read a lot of articles and posts on divorce to learn a lot about divorce.  Having said that, the adage “you get what you pay for” certainly applies here and you need to understand what you are getting if you turn to articles and blog posts for your divorce information. Divorce is state specific, meaning each state has its own divorce laws. So, it really won’t do you much good to read divorce articles online if those articles are about divorce in other states. If you’ve found this article and you are on this website, then presumably you are interested in divorce in Arizona.  It won’t be useful to you then to read articles and posts about California divorce, or any other state for that matter, on another site. Make sure you stick to articles on Arizona divorce.

Next, you should think about who is writing the article or post you are reading, and think about their motivation.  Most articles and posts written by lawyers are intended as marketing material. This certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t get good information.  However, articles and blog posts typically don’t have good citations to resources, or the underlying legal authority. This leaves you in a pickle where you have to assume the lawyer knows what he or she is talking about and you don’t know where or how to confirm the information.  More importantly, laws can change and so it’s unclear from the article itself whether you have current legal information. Plus, without any citations, you can’t really look up the legal sources and see whether the law has changed.  

Perhaps even more concerning, you don’t really know anything about the lawyer writing the article or post you’re reading.  There are many good lawyers out there, but there are certainly bad ones too. With various marketing tools (or tricks) and abilities to game the ranking and/or review systems, it’s incredibly difficult for a consumer to figure out whether a lawyer (and therefore, his/her free website content) is reputable and knowledgeable, or not.  Of course, this is all assuming a lawyer wrote his/her own articles or posts on his/her site. I have seen more than a few legal articles and blog posts that were written by a staff member, or a marketing company (on behalf of a lawyer), who clearly has no substantive knowledge of the law.

In sum, when it comes to free online articles and blogs, be mindful of what you’re getting.  

Divorce Forms and Preparation Services

Aside from free online articles, people can turn to free divorce forms and/or document services.  Again, be mindful of what you’re getting, and what you’re not getting. Forms, especially free forms, can be deceiving because they can give you the assumption that they are “correct” and all you have to do is fill them out.  If it were really that simple then divorce lawyers wouldn’t exist. While forms can be a good place to get guidance, and even use sometimes, you have to understand that the forms are not legal advice, and can possibly lead you astray when it comes to understanding your rights and responsibilities in a divorce.  For instance, most free court forms are generally really good. However, most lawyers will use and submit the same type of filings and look completely different. This doesn’t mean one is right or wrong. It does show that there can be more than one “correct” way of doing the same thing, and a stock form may not necessarily be right for you.  

As another example, and perhaps hitting closer to home, you may give up some of your property rights if you were to follow a court form based on a limited understanding of the law that maybe you read on the internet.  For example, let’s assume that you read Arizona is a community property state, which is correct (A.R.S. 25-211).  Let’s assume you also read that property acquired during the marriage is community property, which is also true but there are exceptions.  Then let’s assume you use a free court form that says to list the community property to be divided. You then follow the form and list a piece of property that was acquired during the marriage using funds from an inheritance, but those funds were held in a joint bank account.  Assuming that the funds are now community by being in the joint account and assuming that the property is community because it was acquired during the marriage, you list that property and ultimately it is divided in your divorce. Based on these hypothetical facts, you would’ve just given up 50% of your separate property.  

If you knew a little more about the law, you might know that the inherited funds in the joint account would not necessarily be community just because they were held in the joint account (Noble v. Noble, 26 Ariz.App. 89, 546 P.2d 358 (1976)).  In fact, so long as the inherited funds weren’t commingled to the point they could not be distinguished, those funds, and anything you bought with it, would be your separate property (Cooper v. Cooper, 130 Ariz. 257, 635 P.2d 850 (App. 1981), and A.R.S. 25-211(B)(1)).  So, the takeaway to remember about forms and document services is that they are not designed to protect your rights.  Free forms and document services can be helpful, but you have to be mindful and understand what is going in the forms before you do anything with them.  

Pro Bono and Legal Aid …when you can get it.

Third, there are options for pro bono work or legal aid services.  Most lawyers don’t love to take pro bono work, or at least not very many pro bono cases.  Your best bet to get pro bono work is if your case is somehow unique. Lawyers are in the business of providing professional services.  Thus, you have to appreciate the fact that they either want to get paid for what they do, or want to have some sort of business benefit from any free work performed.  If you have a unique case, it might appeal to some lawyers who want to engage in an uncertain area of the law, or possibly have more exposure in a particular area, etc.  If you think you have a unique case, try to sell that unique aspect when seeking out pro bono help. For legal services, there are programs out there, but as you can imagine, the line is long and availability is in short supply.  Here’s a couple of links to two sites here and here, where you can start to look for free or cheap(er) legal help.  

Something Else, and New?

Lastly, we offer a free online course on how to file for divorce in Arizona.  We also offer other paid online courses that present legal information so you can educate yourself about the pertinent divorce laws and better understand your rights and responsibilities.  If you took all of our courses, it would be a little over a few hundred bucks. While this isn’t “cheap” it’s less than just two hours of an attorney’s time. Plus, we offer a 7-day money back guarantee on all of our paid courses.  Here’s the bottom line: good divorce help that is free is tough to come by. There’s no free lunches in America, but if you understand the limitations of free materials/information, and understand the context of what you’re getting, then you’ll at least protect yourself against bad information.  Divorce can be very tough and creates a lot of uncertainty for people. Just because you may not be able to afford a lawyer doesn’t mean you need to go it alone or blind. Take the info from this post and use it to gather useful free information out there on the internet, and be sure to check out our free and paid courses to see if we can help you too.