Rejection of Papers for Uncontested Divorce

It’s easy to order documents for an uncontested divorce from the Internet. In fact, you can order them here on Divorceinfo.com from my good friends at US Legal Forms. The problem with ordering forms from the Internet, however, as well as the problem with Internet divorce document preparation services, is a high incidence of rejection. You pay your $25 or your $100 or your $200. You and your spouse sign the documents and file them. Then, a few days or weeks later, you get a nasty response from the court telling you you’ve done something wrong. Typically, you won’t hear what you’ve done wrong, just that you’ve messed up.

I had a friend tell me the other day that the court where she works rejects about 80% of the divorce documents prepared in this way. Those aren’t good odds.

So when the court rejects your papers, you call and ask what you’ve done wrong. There are exceptions to the rule, but typically, you’ll get a curt reply that you need to hire a lawyer to help you fix the documents so the court will accept them.

It’s at that point that you call someone like me, frustrated at the rudeness of the court staff and frustrated with the legal system in general. In most cases, lawyers like me can fix the documents so the court will accept them, but by the time we do you will have spent as much fixing them as you would have spent for an uncontested divorce in the first place, perhaps more.

Why is it that the court staff aren’t more helpful? I don’t know for sure, but I have a theory. I’ve visited with several members of the court staff in several counties, and I can assure you that most of them (not all, but most) are genuinely nice people. I think they wanted to be helpful when they began working. I think they would love to be more helpful now. Unfortunately, in most cases they’ve gotten reamed out in the past by the chief clerk, or a lawyer, or a judge for trying to be helpful and giving someone advice that didn’t work out quite right.

Now they’re resolved they won’t make that mistake again. From now on, anybody who asks for help is going to get the brush-off. It’s the only safe course.

So what do you do? If the court has rejected your documents for uncontested divorce and you’re wondering what’s wrong, I’ll be glad to help you fix them. I will charge you for the time, and typically it costs about as much as it would have cost you to do an uncontested divorce with me, but we’ll get your papers accepted by the court.

If you haven’t yet filed documents for uncontested divorce, consider using a lawyer who focuses on uncontested divorce. The cost is typically pretty low, and you’ll get a very low incidence of rejection of your papers.

I get enough questions about rejection of documents that I have responded by offering the AFLC No Rejection Divorce Guarantee. It basically gives you confidence that when you use Alabama Family Law Center for your uncontested divorce, your divorce will go through smoothly and on schedule. And if there’s a problem, you know it will get fixed.

Alabama Family Law Center is a private law firm. It is neither a public legal aid agency nor a section or subcommittee of the Alabama State Bar. 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.

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