Divorce is expensive. You have to split everything you own with your spouse while also paying for legal help and time in the courts. Many people spend $12,000 or more on their divorce, which you may not want to do. Keeping costs low during a divorce will give you more financial resources for rebuilding your life.
Trying to save money on your divorce requires an understanding of the process. People sometimes make serious mistakes in their cost-cutting attempts. They could make uninformed decisions that might actually cost them far more money in the long run.
For example, people overlook divorce mediation as a tool to make their divorce easier, faster and less expensive. It’s common for people to assume that mediation will increase the cost of divorce because it is a separate service that you have to purchase. Will mediation make your divorce more expensive?
Mediation might actually help you keep costs low
Although you will have to pay a mediator and those costs are comparable to the hourly rates charged by many attorneys, mediation can make the divorce process faster. You and your spouse, as well as your own lawyers, can all sit down together to hammer out the details for your divorce.
Provided that you are successful, you will likely spend on average less than $1,000 on mediation itself. That amount represents the substantial savings over the cost of a litigated or contested divorce.
A successful mediation session ends in a signed agreement. You and your spouse can then use that agreement to file an uncontested divorce and potentially save yourselves thousands of dollars.