Join us as we sit down with Founding Attorney, Lewis Landerholm, to discuss the different factors that play into the total expense of a divorce, and steps you can take to help keep costs down. In this podcast episode, Lewis addresses the following:
• The cost of divorce is more than just the attorney fees.
• Understanding costs vs. rewards in settling your divorce case.
• Discovery is an important, and sometimes costly, component of a divorce case.
• Attorney fees in uncontested cases vs. attorney fees in contested cases.
• How forensic accountants, custody studies and appraisers can add to the costs of your divorce.
• How the divorce process can be made less costly.
• Why the side that is better prepared usually ends up better off in the end.
• When mediation can help keep expenses down, even though it costs money upfront.
• The cost of wanting everything your way.
• …and much more!
If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com.
Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.
Join us as we sit down with Founding Attorney, Lewis Landerholm, to discuss the different factors that play into the total expense of a divorce, and steps you can take to help keep costs down. In this podcast episode, Lewis addresses the following:
• The cost of divorce is more than just the attorney fees.
• Understanding costs vs. rewards in settling your divorce case.
• Discovery is an important, and sometimes costly, component of a divorce case.
• Attorney fees in uncontested cases vs. attorney fees in contested cases.
• How forensic accountants, custody studies and appraisers can add to the costs of your divorce.
• How the divorce process can be made less costly.
• Why the side that is better prepared usually ends up better off in the end.
• When mediation can help keep expenses down, even though it costs money upfront.
• The cost of wanting everything your way.
• …and much more!
If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com.
Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.
Intro:
Welcome to Modern Family Matters, a podcast devoted to exploring family law topics that matter most to you. Covering a wide range of legal, personal, and family law matters, with expert analysis from skilled attorneys and professional guests, we hope that our podcast provides answers, clarity, and guidance towards a better tomorrow for you and your family. Here's your host, Steve Altishin.
Steve Altishin 0:28
Hi everyone, I'm Steve Altishin, Director of Client Partnerships here at Pacific Cascade Legal, and today we have our Founding Attorney, Lewis Landerholm, with us talk about why divorce cases can cost so much. How're you doing today Lewis?
Lewis Landerholm 0:44
I'm good today. How are you, Steve?
Steve Altishin 0:47
Well, I'm doing well. When I talk to folks about divorce, they usually want to talk about why divorces can take so long, or they're so expensive. We talked last month about factors that can affect how long the divorce can take. But today, we're gonna get into the factors that affect the cost of divorce case. So before we actually get into talking about why everything costs so much, let's start by briefly going over the different kinds of expenses that can go into a divorce case.
Lewis Landerholm 1:15
Sure, I mean, with any divorce, the main sort of costs are around the court itself, you know, the court fees that are associated with filing with responding with asking for certain motions, then obviously, attorney fees are a big part of the expense. But then experts, experts will cost a good amount of money depending on what type of expert, whether you need an accountant or whether you need an appraiser or if you need, you know, whoever it may be. Then additionally, depositions are a piece that is expensive, and discovery, during the discovery process when you're trying to gather documents and gather the evidence. All of that can cost money and time. So those are the main factors that will cost money in a divorce.
Steve Altishin 2:07
And I imagine, you know, some of these costs are unavoidable. I mean, like just the cost of getting started. So maybe we can talk a little bit about just the cost that can be involved in getting the case up and running.
Lewis Landerholm 2:24
Sure. I mean, the initial part is there's a filing fee. So filing fee, depending on your state or your county, it's, you know, typically around $300-$350, somewhere in there, that's the filing fee to just get started. To, you know, to prepare documents, it can be, depending on which documents and which hearings that need to be asked for right out of the gate, you know, there can be 1000, a couple 1500. And it just depends on what needs to get done at the beginning. And that's part of the initial strategy session that we have with our clients to determine, do we need temporary hearings? Do we need an immediate danger? Do we need a restraining order? Do we need, you know, those are the things that will impact the amount of money upfront, but there's definitely a cost associated with just getting things moving at the beginning. And then, you know, serving somebody that has a small amount of money depending on, you know, where the person is and if we have to find them. So, you know, those are the things that will impact the beginning expenses right out the gate.
Steve Altishin 3:27
Got it. I imagine then, as you move into the case and examine it, there are factors that can go into determining the cost of the divorce, you know, the complexity, etc.
Lewis Landerholm 3:41
Yeah, of course, you know, the biggest pieces that affect the cost are how amicable the two parties are. If the other side is fighting everything along the way, or refusing to give documents, that inevitably makes it more expensive, because we have to, you know, ask for a deposition, we have to pay for subpoenas, we have to do these things to go get documents. Whereas if the other side, you know, voluntarily gives those to us, then we can save, you know, 1000s upon 1000s of dollars. The more complex the asset side of things is, the more expensive it's going to be because it's going to require, you know, potentially valuations or appraisals. The more contentious child custody cases, we may have to go pay for an evaluator. Evaluators alone or $10-$12,000 by themselves to make a recommendation to the court as to who should potentially get custody or what the parenting plan should look like. So, you know, these are things that really are driven by how contentious the cases are. The biggest factor in what makes a divorce so expensive is that, you know, two people who feel, or used to be, you know, in a relationship and used to be together, we have to pull that apart and divide it. And if everybody is at each other's throats, it's just going to cost a lot more than it would if we can, you know, reach agreements along the way.
Steve Altishin 5:25
You know, you kind of talk about the individual cost, the cost of paying this person, the cost of the legal costs. I think people need to keep in mind also, don't they, that there is a really important legal and financial outcome as a result of all this. So there's a reason you're getting these people, and there's a reason you're having legal expenses, because the outcome is important.
Lewis Landerholm 5:57
Yeah, I mean, that's why all of these things become necessary, right? Like, a big part of the advice that we give to clients is to help them understand the cost benefit of going down a certain path. You know, do we need to spend the money to go get an evaluation? Do we need to spend the money to evaluate a business or to get an appraisal on the house? Or are both parties close enough that we can agree on, you know, on a number? The farther apart people are, the more value there is in getting an expert involved to give some guidance, because obviously, then it's worth that money. You know, I mean, I think the the experts say that, after a divorce, people have to learn to live on about 40% of the income that they're used to, because of the double amount of expenses and splitting everything and all of the above. And so it's important to make sure that things are done correctly, and people really understand what they're asking for, and what the values are, so that they can feel comfortable understanding their financial position after the divorce.
Steve Altishin 6:59
Looking at attorney fees a little bit, you know, a lot of people like to complain about attorney fees. And as you kind of talked about, they're important, because you got to know the case. And you've got to be able to make good decisions about the case. But I, I know that one of the things that we do is have others on a legal team who can help the attorney, which can help some of the costs not be quite so hard to eat some of those costs and still do a great job.
Lewis Landerholm 7:28
Yeah, in our firm, we have a structure that's, you know, similar to say, like a doctor's office. You know, a doctor's office, you have a doctor who's coming in and making evaluations and making the diagnosis. But a lot of times you're going to see a PA or a nurse or nurse practitioner, you know, down to a CNA. Well, we do the same thing. We have our attorneys who go to court and do all the legal strategy and obviously talk to our clients all the time, but we also have paralegals who, they bill at a lower rate, so that we can push that work down to a lower billable rate so that there's more value for clients. We have legal assistants that do other work that then allows our clients to receive more value out of that time, as opposed to an attorney billing an attorney rate to do everything. It's more valuable to our clients to be able to have other people involved who can do their part of the process, that will inevitably keep the cost lower overall. And that's just one of the ways that we as a firm help to keep that cost as reasonable as possible.
Steve Altishin 8:34
Right, right. And I know it can be frustrating as an attorney, because you know, it's not always in your hands. And it's not even always in your clients hands, because the other side has to be reasonable too and, you know, kind of the discovery, the interrogation, that kind of stuff, you know, may or may not be involved and increase the cost if the other side just doesn't want to cooperate.
Lewis Landerholm 8:59
Yeah, that's the most difficult part about predicting costs in a divorce is we have another attorney on the other side, and another person on the other side. And more most of the time, the two people do not like each other, that which then inevitably, people digging their heels and they fight over, you know, certain things that then cost a lot of money. You know, for both sides. You know, we can get a divorce. I always talk to our clients that we have five people in the divorce, we can only control two, which is ourselves and our clients. The judge and the opposing attorney and the opposing party, are outside of our control. Sometimes we're ready to go to court, and we're prepared and everything's ready. And the court says we don't have any time we're going to bump you out two months. Those are things that are outside of anybody's control, but then cost additional money for clients because now we have to do additional discovery. Now we're having additional conversations. So those are factors that are outside of our control that absolutely impact, you know how much a divorce inevitably will cost, you know, both parties. And so really, you know, the the key to me and the key to our team is to really get into mediation be prepared for mediation as quickly as possible. Because then we have some control over the process, we can, we can start that negotiating process, we can see where the problems are, where the where the deal breakers are, so that we can help to avoid some of those long, long term costs that will pop up as athletic nation moves forward.
Steve Altishin 10:39
You mentioned mediation, which just leads to the question of how can you not have a go to trial, because I would imagine that any case, any case, that goes to trial is going to drive the cost up significant.
Lewis Landerholm 10:55
Litigation is the number one, you know, the number one factor, I mean, a day in court, you know, if you take all the firm's in Oregon, a day in court, you know, could range you from Bill, two grand to 10, grand to 20 grand, I mean, it just, it gets astronomical, because you've got that much time for a certain number of people every day, plus the prep time plus everything else. And so, you know, it's not that we we don't avoid litigation for the fact of not wanting to go litigate and not wanting to go to court, we help our clients and talk to our clients about avoiding litigation, because number one, the most important thing is that you have more control over the outcome than giving it to somebody else who doesn't understand your life and your world. So that's the number one reason to avoid litigation. And then the cost, the cost associated with litigation is absolutely the number two, you know, a day of mediation may cost $1,000, but you're doing it in in the 567 month, as opposed to waiting 910 12 months to get to court, and then doing the rest of the work after that. So you're avoiding the additional months worth of expense, but then also the, you know, the large amount of money that recruitment is required to get ready for litigation.
Steve Altishin 12:13
Yeah. And expect you're also saving the money, who people who don't have to go to court? You know, the experts know, in mediation, at least, you can you can summarize them, they don't have to necessarily be there.
Lewis Landerholm 12:26
Right. Yeah, I mean, if we need an expert to go to court, they don't do it for free. So, you know, then they all cost money to go and to, you know, to testify. And, and it takes longer, and there's more days, it turns could turn to, you know, half a day One day trial and to a three day trial pretty easily, just with schedules and with getting people, you know, set up to come in to testify.
Steve Altishin 12:50
Yep. So, are there ways a client can help reduce costs of a divorce?
Lewis Landerholm 12:56
Yeah, I think the the main things that we talked to clients about is number one being efficient, and in how we communicate, you know, it's not that we don't want to communicate, we want to communicate with our clients. But there are ways that can be more effective from a financial standpoint. And that's, you know, putting in all of your questions into onto a list and sending those together, at the same time with an attorney, I think booking meetings is more effective than, than just calling in getting somebody on the phone, you know, where then they were in the middle of doing something else, and then have to shift focus, and then that just takes additional time. Because time is, is the only is what we bill for. And so, you know, if we can book that time, then we're going to prepare for it. And that's more efficient and more effective for clients sitting down and going over something over, you know, a half an hour an hour, you know, may seem like a larger expense, you know, at one time, but it actually is less expensive, because it's not multiple phone calls, going back and forth playing phone tag doing those things that then just cause additional time to be spent to do them. And the other thing is, is that discovery process, which we've talked about before, is the gathering of documents and gathering the evidence, if we can get that information, and we can get those documents organized, and you know, upfront that will save 1000s because then we're not having to organize them. We're you know, we're efficiently able to go through and see what we need and be able to prepare, you know, the financial documents for mediation, and for litigation.
Steve Altishin 14:26
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You know, everyone always wants to know, how much is my divorce gonna cost. And that's got to be really hard, because it can be from a small number to a giant number. But you sort of have to make sort of some sort of a guesstimate of how much you're going to need and, and a lot of people sometimes think that between a retainer, the money you ask upfront is the cost, but that's not really correct, is it?
Lewis Landerholm 14:57
No. I mean, the retainer is the initial deposit it towards fees. So, you know, it's difficult at the beginning, there's a lot of decision trees that that we face in a divorce. And so to predict all of those is impossible. So what we do at the beginning with clients is we attempt to explain, based on their circumstances, this is kind of a rough estimate, you know, I mean, I've seen cases be 5000, I've seen them be 200,000. Like, it just depends on the complexity and how long we have to go to court for how many times we're going to court, all of those things. But during the intake process, we do try to give a, you know, a large range, these are the issues, these are the things that are going to impact the class and the divorce. This is, you know, then we help our clients understand the plan on how to avoid some of those costs. And, you know, ultimately, you know, it's, it's never perfect, but it's about the how we do it. And that's the piece that will help to save money as opposed to what's actually, you know, ultimately going to get done, because it's more of the process that will cause more of the expense to go up than it is what's actually going on in the divorce itself.
Steve Altishin 16:16
And, lastly, I just kind of want to touch on, because, again, you hear from from people who've been in divorce cases, something like, Well, I didn't talk to my attorney this month, I haven't talked to them for six weeks, but I got a big mill. Just because the attorney is not talking to the client doesn't mean things aren't happening behind the scene. Can you kind of explain a little bit about the things that happen that don't get seen?
Lewis Landerholm 16:46
Yeah, there's a lot. I mean, we know what's going on in divorce, we've helped 1000s of people. And so you know, especially staying during the discovery process, there's a lot of work going on to get those documents and get those exhibits and to get that evidence ready for a court or ready for a trial that we know needs to get done. And, you know, it doesn't require do any sort of input from a client. Now we're we're projecting forward and help helping clients understand that these, these sort of big chunks of time are coming. But there's a lot of work that that we have to do, because this is what we do is to help people through this process that then needs to get done in order to be prepared and be ready for a mediation or a court case. So you know, it's hard to be specific, because it just depends on the case a lot. But inevitably, there's going to be a lot of work that that the legal team is doing that isn't always seen right up front.
Steve Altishin 17:48
Yeah, that makes absolute sense. Because we've had our 20 minutes we have to close but thank you so much for helping explain in a really clear way. You know, the factors that affect the cost of a divorce. And thank you for being here today.
Lewis Landerholm 18:03
Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks again. Thank you.
Steve Altishin 18:06
And thank you everyone for joining us. If anyone has any further questions, you can post it here you can get connected with an attorney here at Pacific Cascade Legal. And as always, until next time, stay safe, stay happy and be well.
Outro:
This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Landerholm Family Law and Pacific Cascade Family Law, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our websites at landerholmlaw.com or pacificcascadefamilylaw.com. You can also call our headquarters at (503) 227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our seasoned attorneys. Modern Family Matters, advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.