No one want to experience pain—and we will do just about anything to make it go away. Divorce is a painful, painful process. While it is mental pain, this type of pain is not much different and may be worse than physical pain. That said, a question often posed to divorce attorneys is how to hasten the divorce proceedings. Unfortunately, there may not be an acceptable or any answer to this question. This blog focuses on how to quicken your divorce proceedings.
In most cases, the single biggest factor that determines how long it takes before a case is ready for mediation or trial, is how diligent the counsel is on tendering discovery to ready the case for mediation or trial. To extensions he or she seeks to compile your discovery answers and send them to the other side.
Thus, it is critical that you have counsel who are busy (if they are not busy, that is a red flag-they are not busy for a reason), but not so busy that they cannot afford to give your case timely attention to move it along toward mediation. If mediation fails, the case will go to trial. Again, how fast your case moves along at every juncture is a product of having diligent counsel.
At this point, given the time it takes to complete discovery, you may be thinking that you do not want to go to mediation as it will just drag out the process and you would rather try your case. This noted, before the court will set a final hearing, it has the authority to and will likely order the parties to mediation. A significant number of cases settle in mediation. The reason for this is because the parties choose to settle on their terms rather than have a judge decide their case. There is certainty in settlement at mediation, unlike trial. Additionally, trials are time consuming and expensive.
A small number of litigants are “so over it”, they choose to give into unreasonable demands on the other side. As long as both parties reach an agreement that that is in the children’s best interests, the contracts clause of the Indiana constitution allows a divorcing party to enter into a bad contract. Or, stated differently, in legal parlance, they leave money on the table.
This is exactly what occurred in the Able case. The Court of Appeals ruled that once the parties had entered into a settlement agreement (that it could not order) and that agreement had been accepted by the trial court and incorporated into the decree, the trial court could not modify the agreement of the opposition of the other party.
There is only particular type of case that it is very hard to speed up. This is the case where one spouse is primarily fighting a legal battle and the other an emotional battle. A typical example is where one spouse had an affair and the litigation is the de facto therapy for the spouse. In these cases, there is almost nothing that can be done to speed up the case and the scorned spouse will take every step to delay the process.
For this other spouse, they are litigating a legal battle and want the case completed in the shortest time, with the best possible outcome, at the lowest cost. This is overstating, one of the members of this firm had a scorned spouse take on a second job to fund the litigation against her husband—ironically in a case that did not have children and few assets. This is why lawyers universally advise clients not to date or post on social media during a divorce, doing so risks turning a legal battle in to protracted emotional battle by a wounded spouse.
This blog was written by attorneys at Ciyou & Associates, P.C. who handle domestic cases across Indiana. The blog is written to provide general educational information to make you a more informed legal consumer. This blog is not written to be relied upon for any legal issue or matter. The blog is not legal advice. It is an advertisement. We hope this blog on how toe quicken (or “torpedo”) your divorce proceedings is helpful if this is your case.
