Simple answer: Yes.  Your next question: Why?

Here are just a few reasons why you need an attorney for your Kansas Uncontested Divorce:

1. Even though your divorce is uncontested, that does not mean that you will not have to follow the Kansas law, local court rules and courtroom procedure. If you file your divorce pro se (without an attorney), the court will expect you to know what you are doing.  If you don’t, you run the risk of the court dismissing your case, or making you come back to court several times in order to get everything correct.

2. Even though you both have agreed on everything, you still have to document your agreements in writing.  There are specific requirements for these agreements, commonly called “Separation Agreements”.  You cannot submit a handwritten document signed by both you and your spouse and expect the court to approve the document.

3. The do-it-yourself kit allows for very little flexibility.  If you and your spouse have made some interesting agreements, the forms you buy over the internet do not allow many changes to be made.  You may end up wasting your time on purchasing a document that you cannot use for your case.

4. Time is money.  If both you and your spouse are not represented, you both must attend the hearings.  Both of you have to take off work at least a half day in order to get the divorce finalized.  Further, as I stated previously, you may have to come back several times if you do not have the correct documents at court.  If you hire an attorney you will most likely only have to go to court once, and the hearing is a short, 15 minute hearing.

5. You may forget to discuss certain items.  Your attorney will have a checklist to make sure that you and your spouse have discussed all items, and agreed to the division of them.  It is easy to forget/overlook items when you are drafting this yourself.

6. You don’t know your rights.  You may be agreeing to something you are going to regret.  Most attorneys have the foresight to advise you of what may happen down the road if you do/do not agree to something.

You may think I wrote this post just for job security.  No joke, that is at the back of my mind, however, I am writitng this to prevent you, my reader, from thinking this is so easy it is not worth our money to pay an attorney to do this.  A lot of my clients start out working on their divorce themselves, but quickly realize it would have been less stressful and cheaper to hire me in the first place.  Give me a call, I will give you a flat rate quote and show you my streamlined approach to getting you divorced.