Free or low cost legal services in matters of divorce, child custody, child support, separation, dissolution of marriage, alimony, visitation, dividing property and mediation are available in states all across the U.S. The cost of getting a divorce through an expensive lawyer has caused many couples to seek a “divorce for free” by going the do-it-yourself “Pro Se” route, usually with the help of online divorce kits, books and ebooks for uncontested, no-fault divorces.

Divorce software packages, commonly referred to as divorce kits, can save you a lot of money in attorney’s fees if your divorce is an amicable, uncontested divorce and there are no young children involved. If you’re wondering how to get a divorce on the cheap, it’s important that you spend some time doing your research and learning what your rights are, regardless if you hire a lawyer for your divorce or download divorce forms and do it yourself.

If you don’t understand your legal rights pertaining to getting a divorce from your husband or wife, or about child custody and visitation laws in your area, getting a “free divorce” by way of downloadable forms found online may end up costing you thousands upon thousands of dollars in lawyer fees that you may not be able to afford.

How Much Does a Divorce Cost?

Divorce is big business in the United States, with the average cost of a divorce ranging somewhere between $20 – $40,000 according to recent statistics. Do you really want a divorce? Are you sure? If there is any doubt in your mind about divorcing your spouse, consider the option to stop your divorce and save your marriage while you still can. Nevertheless, there are many ways to reduce the high cost of attorney’s fees, since lining the pockets of expensive divorce lawyers with your hard-earned money isn’t on the list of favorite things to do for most people.

Is there a way to get a free divorce if you can’t afford the high cost of hiring an attorney, or at least a low cost divorce that includes child custody, visitation and child support? Is there such a thing as a “hardship divorce”? Darlene writes, “I want to divorce my husband and need a divorce lawyer, but I can’t afford to hire an attorney and pay the full price with my limited income. How do I get a low cost or cheap divorce nowadays, and is there such a thing as a free divorce?”

The quick and short answer is Yes, you can get free legal services or a low cost divorce, but you have to be willing to do some searching online, make some phone calls and fill out the required forms your attorney will need to provide the best legal help possible. For a hardship divorce, you can choose to file for a divorce yourself with forms found at your local county clerk’s office or state court website, and even represent yourself in court proceedings, but that can be very risky if you don’t know what you are doing. There are also forms to fill out about your financial situation and where you can ask that your court fees be waived, or request that your soon-to-be ex be required to pay your fees.

Get a Free Divorce

Finding a free divorce lawyer or family law attorney to handle your case with or without child custody, visitation, child support and similar problems typical in divorce cases is as simple as searching for information with the right terms or words. Have you ever heard the terms “Pro Bono Lawyers”, “Volunteer Lawyers”, “Legal Aid”, “Lawyer Referral Service”, or “Volunteer Lawyer Program”?

If you are having child custody battles with your spouse, or anticipate child custody or visitation issues to flair up during your divorce proceedings or even after the divorce is finalized, tough child custody attorneys to “kick butt” in court when needed should be at the top of your list.

Legal aid services can sometimes be frustrating, especially if you’ve been told you don’t qualify for legal aid based on low income eligibility requirements or other factors. LSC Legal Services Corporation (www.lsc.gov) is the largest provider of civil legal aid services in our nation, providing legal help and family law assistance to low income individuals, veterans, families and children, victims of domestic violence, the elderly and more. Check the LSC website for details to determine if you meet the Legal Aid Eligibility Requirements in your area.

Pro Bono Lawyers are lawyers who volunteer their time to provide legal services for free. A pro bono lawyer takes on free cases from basic administrative issues, to civil and criminal legal cases. As you could probably imagine, many pro bono lawyers don’t advertise their free services, even though many state bar associations require attorneys to complete a certain number of pro bono hours annually.

To find pro bono lawyers in your area, you can call local general practice attorneys and ask if they are accepting pro bono cases (or ask to speak with their pro bono coordinator if they have one), or you can head straight to the American Bar Association (ABA) website at www.abanet.org and click on the “Public Resources” tab at the top of the page and then click on “Find Legal Help” for a list of legal referral services and resources in your state.

Volunteer Lawyers

Volunteer Lawyers participate in the Volunteer Lawyers Program, providing high quality free legal services within their communities. Chicago Volunteer Legal Services (CVLS) at www.cvls.org has 20 legal clinics in the Chicagoland area, with Margaret C. Benson as Executive Director. Since the Chicago Volunteer Legal Services Foundation was formed 45 years ago, CVLS has provided free legal services to more than 200,000 clients including me by more than 2,700 volunteer lawyers, for FREE.

There are many federally funded legal services programs and referral services in every state, just as there are many pro bono, low-cost or reduced-fee attorney panels and hotlines providing affordable legal help for those who meet eligibility requirements and limitations.

If you are looking for a Volunteer Lawyer to handle your divorce case, be sure to visit LawHelp at www.LawHelp.org, as LawHelp helps low income and moderate income people find free legal aid programs and referrals in their local communities, including answering questions about your legal rights as it pertains to your case. Other possible legal resources to check out include websites such as Divorce.com, DivorceOnline.com and CompleteCase.com that offer state-specific legal forms to downloadable divorce kits.

No Fault Divorce Online is a website that promises a fast and easy “click and split” divorce for uncontested or default divorces, including various divorce forms and other divorce papers that are needed to get a divorce, however they are not divorce lawyers and do not give legal advice. There are also many do it yourself divorce books or divorce guide books with forms and papers included to help with the divorce process. Divorce is never easy or painless, at least not emotionally or mentally, but it is doable and you can survive it just fine even if your divorce is not completely 100% free.

(Disclaimer: I am not lawyer, and this site is provided for informational purposes only, so please don’t send me your personal case information. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not constitute legal advice and should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a professional attorney in your state. That means, this site is “as is”. No representations are made as to the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of the stuff here and you should not rely upon it as legal advice, because I don’t want to update this post every day. Use at your risk. This may be an advertisement, blah blah blah. Your mileage may vary. Past performance does not guarantee future returns. Do not run with scissors. Call your mother. FTC be damned)

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If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may be thinking I must have lost my mind to suggest that women should hide money from their husbands. Give me a few minutes to explain my reasoning on wives hiding money from their husbands, and I’m sure you’ll understand and agree with my reasons for doing this post.

For happy and healthy marriages, free of any kind of emotional, mental or physical abuse, I certainly do not advocate hiding money from your husband. But, based on the kind of web traffic this blog receives from women in abusive relationships and marriages, abused women want and need to know how to hide money from an abusive husband, and I am just the person to tell them exactly how to do it so they can get a divorce from these jerks.

Listed here are the various articles I’ve written that are getting a lot of attention from women doing keyword searches on topics relating to being in abusive relationships or marriage, and based on the feedback and emails I receive on a regular basis, I believe these women have a right to know how to hide money from abusive husbands.

I have now written, “How to Hide Money from an Abusive Husband”, and it is my sincere hope and wish that women suffering emotional, physical and mental abuse will take active steps to leave their abusive relationship, saving themselves as well as their children from further abuse.

Can abusive men be cured? No! So get out now while you still can, before he inflicts more bodily harm to you and/or your children! Children that are raised in abusive homes are more likely to grow up to become abusers themselves (or end up in abusive relationships themselves as adults), so protect yourself and your children from these behaviors before it is too late.

Your additional comments and suggestions on how abused women can hide money from their abusive husbands are welcome, and you can do so by leaving a comment below.

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Have you ever felt as though you were a human doormat? Has your self-esteem and self-confidence ever been so low that you began to believe the negative things people would say to you or about you? Are you a People Pleaser? Does fear of hurting someone’s feelings keep you from communicating in a way that ensures your rights, needs and personal boundaries are respected?

Were you abused as a child in some way? Did fear of physical abuse cause you to grow up without the ability to express your true feelings and needs to those you come in contact with? Have you ever been in an abusive relationship or been married to an abuser?

If you answer Yes to any of the above questions, it’s time we have a chat about learning how to be assertive, how to change your negative self-talk, understanding assertiveness and developing the communication skills needed in order to be shown the respect you rightly deserve.

A Bit of Background First

Anyone who has followed this blog from its inception knows that I was brought up in a controlling and abusive home, where various forms of “punishment” often left me and my brothers battered and bruised, feeling as though no one in the world really cared about me, especially my own family. Ironically, I also grew up in a “religion” that added weight to the controlling and abusive tendencies I suffered as a child, with religious teachings being used as a weapon to keep me and other members of the church organization feeling threatened and afraid of leaving the religion or my marriage. But not anymore.

I got married for the first time at the ripe old age of seventeen, thinking and believing that Mr. Wonderful had come to rescue me into a life of marital bliss free of abuse, only to become a victim of domestic abuse after only six months of marriage. Children that are abused often grow up to marry an abuser no matter how hard they try to avoid it, unable to see the signs of abusive relationships until it is too late. Add to it the religious pressures to conform, and you have yourself a very serious situation on your hands, just as I did. But not anymore.

For me to say that I understand what it means to have low self-esteem, feeling as though your thoughts, feelings, wishes, dreams and desires don’t matter one little bit to anyone, is because I DO understand. I used to that person. But I’m not anymore. I’m here to explain to you how I changed my negative self-talk to become an assertive, self-confident (not aggressive) person, and how you too can and need to learn how to be assertive, and how being assertive greatly improves your personal and professional relationships.

Your Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence Matters

Regardless of how you developed such a low level of self-esteem, that you are often too afraid to speak up for yourself, you have the power within you to change it. I’m not going to suggest that it’s an easy thing to do, because it takes a lot of effort and determination to put aside the negative self-image, but it is doable. I’m living proof. If I can do it, so can you!

One of the most important, and possibly one of the most difficult things to do in changing your negative self-talk and developing assertive communication, is the need to let go of the past. Hanging onto the past, as opposed to letting go of built-up resentments and pain, staying in a victim state of mind, does nothing but keep you spinning in never-ending circles.

Assertive Communication Skills

After many years spent researching different forms of communication styles, it would be pretty easy for me to discuss the three basic forms of communication:

• Assertive
• Passive
• Aggressive

However, I prefer to leave discussions about passive and aggressive communication styles to those with the college degree and experience in mental health to handle. It’s important to understand that assertiveness and aggressiveness are NOT the same thing but are often referred to as being one and the same.

Understanding Assertiveness and You

Assertive communication is the ability to speak and interact in a manner that considers and respects the rights and opinions of others while also standing up for your own rights, needs and personal boundaries.

To be assertive, you must learn to use “I” phrases to express your feelings and beliefs in a straight-forward and respectful manner with those you communicate with, while also respecting the right of others to have a different opinion or viewpoint.

• “I” feel we need to… x,y,z.
• “I” need you to… x,y,z.
• “I” want to… x,y,z.
• “I” feel hurt when you… x,y,z

Dealing with difficult people professionally or personally (or even with those we meet online), can often be challenging. Many people believe they have the right to be downright blunt and harsh in how they communicate with others, but by using assertive communication techniques when dealing with such people, we can maintain our personal boundaries in how we will or will not be treated by others, and at the same time show respect towards others (even if their behavior may not seem so deserving).

Do you have a personal experience with learning how to be assertive to share? Are you struggling to find your own voice in speaking up for yourself? Do you have suggestions for people still battling with self-esteem issues? Please consider sharing your thoughts by leaving a relevant comment below for our readers. With all due respect that is.

Further Reading-

How To Hide Money From An Abusive Husband

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If you have ever been the victim of angry, controlling and abusive men, you understand the depths of despair many women in society experience at the hands of men claiming to love them. Domestic violence against women occurs every day, with victims of violence often too afraid to report the abuse to the police, and is often kept secret from close family members and friends.

Getting inside the minds of men exhibiting controlling and abusive behavior is no easy task, and if current statistics are correct, there isn’t much hope in clinical studies nor positive data as to whether or not they can ever be cured. That is not good news for women that are married to an abuser or involved in abusive relationships, making it that much more important for women to become educated as to the early warning signs of abusive behaviors in order to protect themselves and their children.

(Photo By: Giina Caliente)

Abusive men are often very charismatic, living in virtual denial, quick to blame and manipulate others into thinking and believing they are Mr. Wonderful. These manipulative tendencies often create doubt in a women’s mind over a period of time as to whether she herself is at fault for the abuse, where she then begins to try and make changes in herself in hopes it will end the domestic abuse in the home.

Anger Management Programs and Couples Counseling for abusers haven’t brought much change in these men, as abusive men have the unique and disturbing ability to manipulate and persuade even their counselors that they themselves are simply misunderstood and not at all to blame for the problems at home. One of the most prevalent features of an angry and controlling partner is how he frequently tells women how they should think and tries to get women to doubt their own perceptions and beliefs.

Each year in the United States, two to four million women are assaulted by their partners or husbands, and one out of three women will become a victim of violence by their husband or boyfriend at some point in her life. Children of abusive men, especially the boys, are more likely to grow up to become abusers themselves in their own relationships.

Intimate partner violence against women is steadily increasing, crossing all racial and ethnic boundaries, involving women and teenage girls by their husbands or boyfriends. Founded in 1977, Emerge is the first abuser education program established in the United States, counseling abusive men on an individual basis rather than in group settings, and is working hard to increase public awareness that domestic violence is a learned behavior not a disease, with the goal of helping men stop their abusive behaviors and become better men, husbands and fathers.

Identifying the early warning signs of abusive and controlling men, understanding the four types of abusive behaviors, and recognizing the characteristics of men who batter women can save women’s lives.

“Why Does He Do That?” is an essential resource for women of all ages, for victims of domestic violence, women’s shelters, therapists and counselors. Detailed explanations of the nine types of abusers; manipulative tactics abusive men use; early warnings signs of abusive relationships; dispelling common myths about men who abuse women; the effect such abuse has on children; and getting needed help for abused women.

The good news is that abuse is a learned behavior and can be solved. The bad news is that the abuser must commit to following every step of a quality program in order to solve the problem. Only a small percentage of those who join a quality program actually follow all the necessary steps towards change, and those men who deny having a problem at all have a prognosis of change amounting to ZERO. What if it were to happen to someone you loved? What if it were your sister, mother, niece that were being abused? Or, perhaps your own daughter? Would it still be “someone else’s problem?”

Further Reading:

How To Hide Money From An Abusive Husband

Identifying the Early Warning Signs of Abusive Men

International Women’s Day Say No to Violence Against Women

The Sociopath Next Door-The Ruthless Versus Us

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