Divorce Purgatory
My Divorce Diary
This essay is about my own divorce. I’ve been so grateful to share the story of other women through The Divorce Diaries and they do so anonymously to protect themselves and their families. Given the sensitive nature of this topic, most of this post is behind a paywall. I hope you understand my need to do this, and that you’ll become a paying subscriber not just to read about my own experience but because you’ve been a reader of this Substack for a while and recognize it has worth. Thanks for understanding and supporting this work.
Everyone knows that getting divorced is a slow and time-consuming process. The average length of time a divorce takes in California is 15 months. I have just hit the 17 month mark. We are still not done. There are no set timelines or blueprints for the experience. Just like every marriage is unique, every divorce is, as well. You file, yes. That’s actually pretty simple. But then it goes into this convoluted process where there are an infinite number of ways your divorce can go off the rails.
Because most people want to avoid going to court, they are faced with the following choices.
Mediation
Arbitration or hiring a private judge
Now, if our court system wasn’t so overburdened and expensive, we might all just file, the courts would set a trial date, and the timeline to prepare would have begun. But the advice I received over and over was… avoid court at all costs. The reasons seem to be:
It's expensive to go to trial. Your lawyer must prepare witnesses and experts and file motions. That leads to a lot of billable hours when your average divorce lawyer costs upwards of $400/hr.
You can’t guarantee the judge assigned to your case will have a background in family law.1 Judges are also very subjective and if they don’t take a liking to you, they can rule in very strange ways and not in your favor.
The courts are overburdened. My lawyer estimated that if I wanted to go to trial today, I wouldn’t get a court date until March.
You can get divorced online via Divorce.com. I hope to provide an interview with a woman who has taken this route soon. But I didn’t know about this option when I filed in February 2023. I just knew that to get divorced, I needed a lawyer. I spoke to some friends, got some referrals, made some phone calls. A number of lawyers weren’t taking on new clients or never called me back. Finally one responded, was available, and I hired her. My husband filed (because his lawyer had a lower hourly rate). I responded to the petition.
And then, we entered divorce purgatory.