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Unfortunately, the Rhode Island Divorce process is often oversimplified by laypeople.
A clerk overheard a layperson filing his own Rhode Island Divorce Complaint in
the Providence County Family Court. The man described the
divorce process as "easy." The brief encounter sounded like this:
"First, you file your divorce complaint in family court.
There are a few other documents they give you to fill out but they aren't any
big deal. Then you give all the documents to the court and pay $100 to
file them. From there the court does the rest. They give you a paper with
a hearing date and a stamped copy of the documents you filed. The hardest
part is getting the documents to the sheriff's office and coughing up another
$55 to have your wife served. On the hearing date, you and your wife come to court, tell the judge what you
each want and the judge grants your divorce. Three (3) months later your divorce is final."
Neither the Rhode Island Divorce Process nor the legal issues that go along with
a Rhode Island divorce are this simple or this easy. If this were the
case, there would be no need for divorce lawyers and everyone would be handling
their own divorces.
In truth, only a handful of people represent themselves in
Rhode Island divorces each year in comparison to the total number of cases that come before the Rhode Island Family Court.
Many of the people who handle their own divorce cases without the benefit of an experienced divorce attorney make critical
mistakes. They are referred to as critical mistakes because if
an attorney were to make these same mistakes
it could subject the attorney to a claim for malpractice. Certainly if a
person would not want their attorney committing malpractice in their case, that
same person wouldn't want to commit the same mistake themselves and leave them
in the same poor position.
Examples of critical mistakes that have been witnessed in the Rhode Island
Divorce and Family Courts have included
(1)
dismissal of your case;
(2)
prolonged delay of your divorce;
(3)
improper procedure creating results you did not intend;
(4)
failure to establish jurisdiction;
(5)
failure to meet your burden of proof;
(6)
failure to request necessary relief that you need from the court;
(7)
failure to protect your future interests or the interests of your minor
children;
(8)
failure to anticipate tax consequences;
The
list goes on and these are only a few of the problems that can arise. These
mistakes are far from miniscule. It cannot be stressed enough how
important it is that you know both your rights now, as well as the consequences
that might occur if you failed to protect those rights correctly either at the
time of your divorce hearing or at the time you file documents in the family
court.
As you review the other sections of this website hopefully you
will obtain a greater appreciation for the substantial issues that arise in
Rhode Island divorce or family laws.
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