Is this worth fighting over?
Two spouses spend eleven months and forty thousand dollars arguing about a twenty thousand dollar issue. It happens constantly, and it happens because nobody ever puts the two numbers next to each other. This page does that, at your numbers, and then gets out of the way.
This is not advice to settle, and it does not know anything about your case. Some things are worth spending more to win than they are worth: a principle, a precedent for the next five years, a child’s schooling, not rewarding behavior that should not be rewarded. Arithmetic cannot price any of that, and it should not try. What it can do is stop you finding out the cost afterwards.
The figures stay in your browser. There is no account, nothing is transmitted, and closing the tab erases it. You should not have to tell a website what your divorce is worth.
In this subject 3
Your numbers
In this subject 3
Change anything and the total moves as you type. The one people get wrong is the hours — a contested issue that reaches a hearing is rarely under twenty, and the honest number is usually the one that feels too high.
Three things the arithmetic keeps showing
Most people enter 70 or 80 because they believe they are right. Being right and winning are different events, decided by a judge who has your file for an afternoon. Put in 50 and see what happens to the number. If the case only works at 80, it is thinner than it feels.
It appears on no invoice, which is exactly why it is left out. Days in court, days assembling documents, and the days afterwards when you are no use to anyone. For most people it is the second largest line here.
A contested issue is not just billed hours. It extends the case, and a longer case means longer under it — and where there are children, prolonged conflict between parents is the part with the best-evidenced link to how they do afterwards. That cost has no box on this page because it cannot honestly be given one. What the research actually says.
The arithmetic is your own: this page assumes nothing about rates, hours or outcomes and holds no data about any case. If a figure here looks wrong to you, it is because you entered it. Tell us if the page itself is wrong.
Keep reading
- What divorce costs — by state, from official sources
- What people report paying
- Conflict and the children — what prolonged conflict actually costs them
- What am I forgetting? — before you decide what to fight for
- Can I afford to get divorced?
- Hidden assets