Vienna, Virginia, Family Law Attorney
Thank you for visiting the blog for the law office of Easy-Divorce.Net. On the blog, we will be covering new developments in family law, as well as addressing questions that frequently arise during a family law matter. If you have questions about divorce, child support or child custody, please contact me to schedule an appointment to discuss your legal concerns.
How do you get divorced if you can't locate your spouse?
Posted by: Lisa Lane McDevitt
May 6, 2011
I receive a fair number of calls from individuals that would like to have an uncontested divorce but have no idea where the person resides and has no contact information. In this situation it is still possible to obtain an uncontested divorce. Your attorney will advise you to contact your spouse's friends and relatives to attempt to locate him or her. Don't worry if you do not know how to contact the friends and relatives. You can still get divorced. Your attorney will also advise you to send a letter or email to the last known address of either your spouse or your spouse's relatives. Once this is completed you will then sign an affidavit to the court stating that you have made a diligent effort to locate your spouse but failed to locate him or her. Your attorney will then request permission from the court to allow you to serve your spouse the bill of complaint for divorce by publication in a local newspaper. In our area we usually publish in the Washington Times. The Times will charge you a $25.00 publication fee. The publication will run for 4 consecutive weeks. Your spouse will then have 4 additional weeks to respond to the last publication. When that time expires you may proceed with your uncontested divorce in the same manner as if you had served your spouse in person.
Doing it Yourself
Posted by: Lisa Lane McDevitt
November 19, 2009
Topic:
Today I received a call which, sadly, is not unusual. The person calling wanted to know how it was possible for his ex-wife to file for spousal support when she had previously signed a property settlement agreement (also known as a "martial separation agreement") which clearly stated she would not receive spousal support. After asking several questions, I discovered the parties drafted the agreement themselves.
You should never draft your own separation agreement! It's particularly dangerous if you have minor children, have any assets and/or you or your spouse were or are now active US military. Even if you don't have children or marital assets, and neither of you were in the military, you still shouldn't draft your own separation agreement because you could, for example, fail to include what I like to call "magic words" in the separation agreement and that could leave you exposed to a future claim by your ex-spouse, like the gentleman that called me this morning.
I know how tempting it must be to either use these self-help books or online services that say they will provide you with all you need to draft your own separation agreement. Nonsense! First of all, most of those agreements are not state specific, even when they claim to be. That means some of these agreements could be unenforceable in Virginia and others could simply cause you a great deal of litigation later. Second, those agreements do not include many of the "magic words" like "this paragraph is not modifiable by any court for any reason." Third, those agreements are drafted to reach the whole population, not your specific family or your finances. When you have an agreement drafted by an attorney it is very specific to your unique family and financial situation. And finally, I have yet to see an agreement drafted by the parties either through a book or via the web that doesn't have some problem.
Do yourself a favor and have an attorney that specializes in family law draft your separation agreement. Yes, it may cost a little bit more to have an attorney draft your agreement than it would for you to do it, but trust me, it could save you a whole lot of money and heartache in the future.
I'm a lawyer and I didn't draft my own last will and testament. I hired an attorney that specializes in that area of the law for the very reasons I just stated above. It just isn't worth the so-called savings to do it on your own.
