What’s an Uncontested Divorce in Texas
What is meant by an uncontested divorce in Texas? Family Law Attorney Rachel Rust explains in this video. If you have questions about your situation, you should talk to an attorney. If you’d like to talk with Rachel, please call her office at 832-271-4830 for an appointment at the office in Fulshear or at other Wadler, Perches, Hundl & Kerlick offices in Richmond, Wharton, Matagorda or El Campo.
Summary of Uncontested Divorce in Texas
Rachel Rust: – Well, first of all an uncontested divorce is not term of art that means something specifically in law different than what it means in the average use of those words. Uncontested means what you think it means. It means that all of the issues that would normally be resolved in a divorce have been agreed to. So that means you’ve agreed to a parenting plan, you’ve agreed to child support, you’ve agreed how you’re going to share the children, you’ve agreed to how to divide your assets and your debts, and you’ve agreed if there’s going to be any spousal support exchanged.
There are many ways to arrive at an uncontested divorce. One is that the folks just agree to everything and they write it down and you may take it to an attorney to put in legal form.
Lawyers call it a kitchen table agreement. But I don’t think anybody in the nonlegal, real world would call it a kitchen table agreement. But it’s basically that folks have agreed to how to divide up their stuff, and it may be at a kitchen table or it could be at the dining room table, or it could be in emails back and forth.
But the gist of it is that they’ve agreed to everything and they ask an attorney to draft it in the legal form that would be enforceable. I often do that for people who have agreed to the majority of things. Sometimes I have questions though. There are things left out. They didn’t mention retirement or they didn’t mention how they’re going to sell the house or if the house doesn’t sell, how long it will stay on the market. What percentage they will reduce the asking costs?
Those kinds of things that come from my experience with where things get hung up. I’m not trying to cause a problem with what people think that they’ve agreed to, but to just clarify when you say this do you mean this or do you mean that. Most people getting divorced haven’t done that before and so they don’t always know what questions to ask. There are a lot of attorneys who will try to work with a couple trying to resolve their issues on their own terms without churning it up.
Another way arrived at an uncontested divorce is to go to mediation. Folks think that they’ve worked out some things but not other things and they need a little help. Or they need a little help in talking to each other about that because nerves are raw and emotions are raw and it’s hard to say what they need to say and so a mediator is a neutral person whose job it is to try to come to an agreement. So if people come in and they agreed to a lot of the things, then they may just mediate the part that they haven’t agreed to or haven’t been able to come up with a solution. Mediators can’t give legal advice but they can help facilitate reaching an agreement.
Another way that people end up with an uncontested divorce is to hammer it out with attorneys who have been told by their clients that they want to settle this. They all get into a room and have a old fashioned, I won’t say knock down drag out, but a discussion and come up with a compromise as to how they’re going to divide up their stuff or share their kids.
There are a lot of reasons to try to do all those things even though they sound hard. There’s a temptation to just say let the lawyers do it. I don’t want to fool with it. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to see her. And in my opinion that would be a grave mistake because nobody cares more about your kids than you do.
The judges sitting up on the bench didn’t go to King Solomon’s School of Wisdom, and they don’t have any particular expertise on your kids. So if there is a way for parents to, either with or without help, to come up with an agreement that they can live with, in my experience, it’s much more likely that both sides will live with that agreement and they won’t keep going back to court every year. It’s also cheaper emotionally and financially.
It makes for better results because people will come up with something that fits their values and their lifestyle and it’ll be something that a court couldn’t order, and wouldn’t order. Because if you go to court, you’re going to get a pretty close to a standard possession schedule and a guideline support, but if you work out an agreement with your spouse you may come up with some unique solution that works for you. You just need some help getting there.
So, I encourage anyone, everyone who is considering this process to really truly look at ways other than a knock down, drag out trial to resolve their differences.