Understanding the Costs of Filing a Default Divorce in Oklahoma
What are the costs for filing a default divorce in Oklahoma? I’m Tulsa divorce attorney James Wirth and that’s the question that we have. So first, we need to talk about what is a default divorce. Well, in any type of civil case, you file your petition. You get service of it on the defendant.
The defendant has a set amount of time to file a response of pleading. If they do not file that response of pleading, they fail to appear in court, then you can request default judgment, which is essentially that you’re going to request that the court award what you asked for in your petition without having to prove your case because the defendant is not participating, and therefore, you should get what you’re requesting.
What is a Default Divorce?
The court doesn’t have to grant everything you’re requesting. It still has to be legal for the court to do so, and if you’re requesting some things, the court may just sign off on it. Other things, the court may have more scrutiny and want some indication or offer of proof or an actual hearing potentially on damages to determine that you’re entitled to what you’re requesting, but you can’t have a full fair hearing if the other side is not participating.
Therefore, the law allows you to file for a default. So, what are the costs associated with doing that in a divorce? Well, the filing fees are going to be the same for filing the petition. Typical petition, if you’re represented by an attorney and you need one summons, $270,214 in the state of Oklahoma, but I think the question relates to what is the cost of representation.
Cost of Representation in a Default Divorce
So, with my office, if we’re filing for a divorce, we’ve got evergreen retainers. You pay a certain amount up front, whether that be $3,500, or $5,000, it bills hourly, and you maintain that retainer balance as it is billed every week. But if the matter is fully agreed upon and we’re doing an agreed divorce, meaning that the parties have agreed to all terms, they agree to get divorced, they agree regarding if there are kids, custody, visitation, and child support, they agree on who’s paying attorney’s fees, they agree on asset division, debt division, all of those types of things, whether they’re spouse support or not.
If they agree with all terms, then we’ve got that as an agreed divorce, and we usually do those as a flat fee. Okay, so how much is it if it is a default divorce? Typically, my firm would fall into the first category because we don’t know that it will be a default divorce upfront. We have to go through the process of getting the person served, whether that’s by a process server or by certified mail or whether that’s by service by publication, then we have to see if they respond.
Uncertainties in Default Divorce Costs
If they don’t, sometimes it’s easy. You present it, just hand the judge a default decree saying they didn’t file a response of pleading timely, and the judge may sign off on it. Other ones, the judge may say, you know what, I want a motion for that. You’ve got to draft the motion for default judgment, and then you’ve got to set that for a hearing, and then at the hearing, the judge may decide to grant it at that time.
So it can go a lot of different ways. It’d be a lot of different levels of work because we don’t know how the judge is going to handle the defaults. We don’t know whether the person’s going to be in default. So for the cost of representation, even if we think up front that the other party is not going to respond, we don’t know for sure. So it’s going to fall into the first category. We’re going to treat it as far as our retainer as a typical divorce. We’re not going to treat it as an agreed divorce.
Schedule a Low-Cost Initial Strategy Session
If you’ve got questions about the cost of going through a civil proceeding, you should talk to an attorney about your specific circumstances to receive legal advice specific to you. If you’d like to get that scheduled with an attorney at my office, you can go online to MakeLawEasy.com or call us at 918-879-1681.
