There Are 12 Reasons In Oklahoma To File for Divorce
Video Transcribed: My name is Ryan Cannonie, I am the Tahlequah criminal defense attorney for Wirth Law Office in Cherokee County.We talked in the last one, figuring out what type of divorce you want to file. Just get draft documents and agreed upon or contest a divorce. Once you make that decision, then you have to decide what your basis for divorce is.
There’s I believe 12 reasons in Oklahoma to file for divorce, but most people only use a handful; adultery, abandonment, gross neglect of duty, extreme cruelty, or emotional or physical cruelty, then the most common, incompatibility. Incompatibilities are no-fault divorce provision. It just means that none of the others applied and you’re getting a divorce. You have to allege that you, for some reason, are incompatible with each other.
Now, when you go to file a divorce, there has to be a petition filed, there’s paperwork to do. If you have an attorney, they can guide you through this. What you’re going to be seeing though, is that there’s an attorney fee on it. Let’s say this is a very simple divorce. Attorney’s charging you only 1,500. Even let’s say this is just an agreed upon.
Well, in addition, that 1,500, you’re going to have to pay filing fees, which range from 250 to 300, depending if you have kids or not. There are certain things you have to have in your divorce filing. There’s certain paperwork by statute. You can’t just file a piece of paper that says, “I want to be divorced.” You have to have certain other pieces, certain other documents filed with it. Your attorney’s going to know what those documents are. If you have children, it actually increases the filings and increases some of the costs when you file for divorce.
But your basis for divorce are going to be those reasons I listed. Like I said, there’s more, but those are really the primary ones. Once you get that, then you’re going to have to go sit with your attorney, start going through what documents they need from you, what things they have to have you sign, and then proceed with filing the divorce.
Now, if a divorce is agreeable, that’s even better because both parties can agree to waive service. Now, what service means is when you are sent court documents via a person saying out there, “You’ve been served,” that’s how the movies depict it, that service.
There’s also other ways to do service per statute that you can look into besides just having a process server for certain documents. All of those cost. Once you file your divorce petition, the court by statute gives you a certain amount of time to get that done. If the other party’s in agreement with the divorce, they can waive service, come in, and just be ready to go.
Now, if you have kids, the court is going to make you wait. I want to say, yeah, it’s 90 days now before you can get your divorce granted. If it’s an agreed divorce, you don’t have to have both parties there. You just have to have one party there to give sworn testimony. To get a divorce, you can’t just turn in paperwork and let the court do it. There will actually have to be sworn testimony at some point before the divorce is granted.
I’ve just thrown out a couple of things there. There’s a whole big bucket there of different things that you have to do for divorce. Whether it’s different filings, different documents that have to be filed, the service and notice provisions, the actual courtroom testimony, all these things are what your attorney is going to know how to do and going to make sure that it’s done correctly.
Because the last thing you want when you’re dealing with a separation like this is to have a divorce that is flawed in some way, or to show up to court and a judge be a little irritated that you’re wasting his or her time, and you don’t have the proper paperwork to file, or you haven’t done the proper steps, or when you show up not knowing what fees and costs are going to be assessed on top of everything else you’ve done.
If you find yourself in the unfortunate or maybe it’s for a good reason getting a divorce, then come talk to us. We can help. We can look over what’s going on. Sometimes people will even want to talk to an attorney about filing a divorce and they try to reconcile during it. I’ve seen that happen a lot. Divorces are a tool, but they can be like any tool you use in multiple ways, and you need someone who actually knows how to use them. You want to talk to a Tahlequah attorney, come on down or give us a call. We can help your Tahlequah divorce.
