Everyone wants a “ballpark” estimate for how much their family law case is going to cost and – who am I kidding? – I can completely understand. It’s awful to feel like your divorce or custody case, and the corresponding legal representation, is some kind of terrifying blank check.
It could cost $5,000; it could cost $50,000. Who even knows? And lawyers are generally no better, often refusing to give estimates.
In some ways, I admit: I’m going to be like all the other lawyers. There are just too many variables to know with certainty how much a case is going to cost, especially with little to no information. Even after having had the benefit of an initial consultation, there are just still a lot of ‘what ifs’.
In general, the two wildest wild card issues you can have in a divorce are child custody and spousal support. That’s where the bulk of the money is often spent fighting, if there is fighting, and those issues can literally run the gamut. One case might resolve after a few back-and-forths with opposing counsel; another might take years and tens of thousands of dollars.
How do you know which is which?
Sometimes I do; sometimes I don’t. I find that, in general – and this isn’t a dig, I promise – women aren’t all that good at telling me, up front, how difficult their cases will be, either. I hear from women all the time who tell me this’ll be the worst case I’ve ever seen and, on the other hand, others tell me that they’ve got it all in hand and not to worry because it’ll settle right away. Those estimations are sometimes right, but sometimes insanely wrong, for better AND for worse.
The truth is that you don’t really know a man until you divorce him. A client of mine (hi, if you’re reading this! I still think about you!) told me that once and it impressed me in its wisdom. Obviously, I’ve used it ever since. I can’t tell which husbands are going to be impossible to deal with or which ones will move on quickly. There are certainly both types. And, in any case, not everyone has the money to be a real horse’s behind, if you know what I mean. For a lot of people – men and women alike – once they start getting those bills from their attorney, they settle pretty quickly because it’s just too expensive to continue to fight.
It’s hard to tell up front. What you CAN tell, though, is what the attorney needs as a retainer to take the case and what their hourly rate (and the hourly rate of their paralegal) is. It’s always good to be asking questions about the parts of the process that are the most transparent, and those are often ways that you can begin – even early on, even without knowing what will happen – to tell differences between costs from attorney to attorney, or firm to firm.
You can also ask if there are any flat based fees, like for drafting an agreement, or minimum billing conventions that the firm will follow. You can ask about how bills will be received, how often, and what you might expect to see on them. At my firm, asking questions about billing is always a non-billable event, so if you have questions it’s not like you’re then going to turn around and see that you’ve been charged for seeking that clarity.
It’s easier, when we’re talking about ballpark figures, to estimate costs in agreement cases, as opposed to cases that are litigated. It’s probably safe to say that most agreements ultimately end up costing less than $10k, some even cost considerably less than that. We often start – at least in my office – with retainers of around $3500 for an agreement. It can cost more, obviously, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will. The total overall cost will be related to how many hours it took to resolve the case; everything is billable in increments of a tenth of an hour depending on how long each task took to complete. I would say average is somewhere in the neighborhood of $5-7k from start to finish, though I make no guarantees here.
In family law, there is not very much pure ‘flat fee’ billing; almost everything is handled based on how long it took. There is absolutely no ‘contingent fee’ billing, because that is considered unethical in family law cases.
Contested cases, though, can vary even more dramatically. To go all the way through to trial, you’re probably looking at an estimate in the low tens of thousands, but it can go up dramatically. Costs can be increased depending on the difficulty of the issues to resolve, opposing counsel, and even the obnoxiousness of your soon-to-be ex.
Any litigation is expensive, but generally fault based divorces are more expensive than no fault; child custody litigation is less expensive than divorce litigation (but it’s endlessly modifiable based on a material change until the children turn 18 and it’s also appealable – both significant factors when it comes to total overall costs, not just of THIS case, but in terms of lifetime litigation).
It’s always hard to estimate total costs, but it helps to have an idea of the issues involved. Cases can become contested for many reasons – and not just because child custody and/or spousal support are an issue.
For more information about costs or to register to attend an upcoming seminar, give us a call at 757-425-5200 or visit our website at hoflaw.com.