Divorce Books - What to Look for and What to Avoid

There are huge advantages to doing your own divorce, but to be successful you'll need recent and reliable divorce books or kits created specifically for your state. The key word is reliable, because I've seen a lot of divorce books that definitely do not qualify.

In particular you should avoid those that claim to be good in all states. Don't believe it! Every state is different. I know for a fact that in several states generic divorce books definitely do not work, so consider them untrustworthy.

You want a book or kit that was published no more than a few years ago. Laws change and old information can be dangerous. In California, the Legislature is so active that rules and forms usually change more than once a year, so for a California dissolution of marriage or domestic partnership you will want divorce books that have been updated for the current year.

Here's how to look for reliable divorce books and kits:

* Look in your phone directory in the county government section, or contact your county courthouse and find out where there is a law library that is open to the public. Ask the law librarian if there are reliable books, kits or a set of forms and instructions for your state. If they point you to a computer and show you online forms to fill out, read my comments below about such Internet services.

* Go to the public library and ask the reference librarian if he/she knows of any reliable divorce books with forms and instructions for doing a divorce in your state.

* Many courts have self-help forms and instructions on their web sites. Look in the yellow pages under government listings for the courts in your county. Call and ask where divorces are filed and ask the clerks there if they have self-help material. Ask if their court has a web site and get the address.

* Or, get the formal name for the court in your county where divorces are filed and search Google for their web site. Look for forms and see what they offer. The point is this: when it comes to legal divorce books and materials, if they're not from an expert source or an official government site, be very cautious!

Avoid Internet divorce kits and forms

I recommend against online divorce forms and forms that you fill out on the internet because they have several serious limitations that you don't have with divorce books.

Not enough information. Divorce is not about filling out forms--it is about understanding your situation and making decisions. To fill out forms, you need to know what it means to check one box rather than another or file one form rather than another. You need to know where you are, what's going on, where you are going. This information is either totally inadequate or completely missing on all sites I've reviewed.

Limited and incomplete. These services have one fixed way to do cases that does not cover a wide variety of situations. You can easily discover part-way through that your case does not fit their pattern. Some services get you started but do not complete the case or do not provide important options.

Inflexible. Once you start to fill out the forms, you're stuck on a very long path that you can't get off of. It's not easy, maybe not even possible, to jump about from one place to another. What's worse, you can't step back and get a long view, so you're forced to work without a good understanding for what's going on, where you are in the process, where you're trying to go, or why you are doing things their way.

If someone refers you to a particular forms site, ask them about these points. You'll be better of using divorce books from a trusted source.