My divorce work is focused on couples who are able to be reasonably cooperative. I’m a good choice to prepare your Alabama divorce documents if you have good working confidence that if you prepare the documents for an uncontested divorce, your spouse will sign them willingly. I can even be helpful if you prepare the documents, you and your spouse talk calmly and openly about them, and then you negotiate and agree on changes to them so you can sign them.
I am NOT a good choice, however, if there’s a good chance that your spouse will refuse to cooperate with you at all, leaving you with no choice but to hire a “typical” divorce lawyer (most anybody who practices divorce law other than me) who can file for divorce, get service of process on your spouse, and force your spouse to deal with the case. The papers I am set up to prepare don’t do that. Instead, they assume that both spouses will cooperate with each other and will sign the necessary documents so they can be filed with the Talladega County Circuit Court and your divorce can be completed simply, quickly, quietly, and inexpensively.
If your spouse refuses to have anything to do with the papers I prepare for you, the money you spend on me (and you spend it in advance) would be wasted. That’s why you want to make sure you have that good working confidence your spouse will sign before you get started with me.
If you’re not sure whether your spouse would sign divorce documents, the best way I know to find out is to ask. Find a time when both of you are calm, quiet, and relatively unstressed, and ask this question: “If I prepare documents for an uncontested divorce calling for [you fill in the key terms here], would you sign them so I can get them filed?” If your spouse says yes, I think you’re entitled to trust that statement enough to spend money on me. If your spouse says no, however, or won’t answer in any sort of meaningful way, I would think you would want to avoid spending any money on me. The more prudent course might be to hire a more typical divorce lawyer who can prepare documents for an uncontested divorce but who can also represent you later in an adversarial divorce if that’s what’s needed.
If you’ve already invested the money to prepare divorce documents and your spouse won’t sign, it’s time to do some problem solving.
Because this page talks about my legal practice, I need to say this: “No representation is made that the quality of the legal services to be performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by other lawyers.”