Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this question.  Divorces involve not only the attorneys fees but court costs, litigation expenses and possibly the cost of a Guardian ad Litem.  See the section on Guardian ad Litem for more information on the latter.

Most firms charge an hourly rate and then ask for you to deposit a retainer which the firm will then bill against.  That is what we do here at Makowski Law Offices.  The hourly rate is usually based on the skill level of the attorney and there may be different hourly rates depending on whether an attorney, law clerk or paralegal are working on the case for you. 

After that, the total cost of the case depends a lot on you and your spouse.  One of the biggest problems in divorce work is getting complete and accurate information of all of the assets and liabilities.  It will save you a lot of money if you are able to make clear lists of these things, including account numbers and the names and addresses, along with the amounts.  You should also provide supporting documentation.  For example, your list might include an entry like this:

Real Estate: 123 S. Main St., Anytown, Ohio  Owners: Both

Value: $220,000

Mortage with Bank of Everyone, 456 Commerce Avenue, New Big City, NY

Account Number: 000022220  Balance: $150,023

Even with this detailes information, you should also have a copy of the deed and the latest mortgage statement.  For the purpose of the value, provide whatever document you have, whether it be a printout of the auditor's valuation or a recent appraisal due to a home refinance.

The more detailed your is, the less time your lawyer will have to spend searching for information.  And even if you think you have included all of the information in your list, you should still make sure that you provide the statements and other information.  We might have to prove some of these things, and the actual statements are what would be needed for that.

Depending on the court, the court costs range from $200 to as high as $400 or more for the initial deposit.  The court costs most likely will exceed that amount, but this initial deposit is usually all that is needed until the case is completed.

Additional costs could include the Guardian ad Litem fees.  Most GALs, as they are referred to, will charge an initial retainer of $1000 to $1500.  You will be part of the process for the selection of the GAL.  Either the parties will agree or they will submit names to the Court and the Court will pick.  A GAL is appointed only in cases involving children or incompetent adults.  The GAL is usually used to help resolve issues pertaining to the children and often a GAL will actually help get a case settled for you.  Your attorney can advise you on whether your case would be appropriate for a GAL.  Once the deposit in used to pay the GAL (who charges an hourly rate usually ranging from $100 to $150 per hour), the GAL will send out bills.  The deposit and the subsequent bills are usually divided between the parties, usually 50/50 or proportionate to income.  Again, this could be different based on the unique circumstances of the case, and you would need to consult with an attorney to learn more about your particular situation.  See the section on Guardian ad Litem for more on this.

There could also be costs associated with a forensic psychological evaluation if there is a custody dispute, which could range from $4000 to $10000 or more, depending on what is involved.  For more on that, see the section on Custody and Visitation.

Finally, there is the cost of litigation expenses.  These would include the costs of a process server, a court reporter for taking depositions, the cost of issuing subpoenas, costs to get copies of records, or costs of experts to do valuations of property, including real estate and businesses, forensic accountants or pension valuations.  Don't panic.  Most cases do not involve the use of these expenses.  You should talk to your attorney to see which ones would be needed.  I always inform my client of the different options, including what happens if we do not hire the expert or do not take the deposition.  It is always important to assess whether the expense involved will result in an outcome that warrants the expense.  I would not want to spend thousands of dollars to value a business that is only worth $5000.  However, a forensic accountant that could help you find thousands of dollars in a retirement account might be worth it.  These are decision that you and your attorney need to make together to see if these additional costs will need to be incurred.

In Ohio, we divided the marital assets and marital liabilities.  To determine what that means, we start by identifying everything accumulated during the marriage as marital.  This means that if you used income that you earned while you were married when you purchased something, then that something is marital.  A lot of people come to me and say, "but I bought that with my own money!"  I always ask how they got that money.  If they inherited it or it was a gift just to them, then it might be their own money.  But if they mean the money that they earned while married, that is really marital money, even if you keep separate bank accounts and have separate finances.  Now does that mean that everything marital gets divided?  Not necessarily.  There can be reasons, such as the way the item was used.  For example, if there is a car loan and the wife is getting the car, she will also get the car loan.  If the husband had a student loan that was used for his education, that might be treated as his separate debt.  Each situation is unique, but we start with this general rule.

Technically, under Ohio R.C. Sec. 3105.171(A)(3)(a), marital property is:

(i) All real and personal property that currently is owned by either or both of the spouses, including, but not limited to, the retirement benefits of the spouses, and that was acquired by either or both of the spouses during the marriage;

(ii) All interest that either or both of the spouses currently has in any real or personal property, including, but not limited to, the retirement benefits of the spouses, and that was acquired by either or both of the spouses during the marriage;

(iii) Except as otherwise provided in this section, all income and appreciation on separate property, due to the labor, monetary, or in-kind contribution of either or both of the spouses that occurred during the marriage;

(iv) A participant account, as defined in section 148.01 of the Revised Code, of either of the spouses, to the extent of the following: the moneys that have been deferred by a continuing member or participating employee, as defined in that section, and that have been transmitted to the Ohio public employees deferred compensation board during the marriage and any income that is derived from the investment of those moneys during the marriage; the moneys that have been deferred by an officer or employee of a municipal corporation and that have been transmitted to the governing board, administrator, depository, or trustee of the deferred compensation program of the municipal corporation during the marriage and any income that is derived from the investment of those moneys during the marriage; or the moneys that have been deferred by an officer or employee of a government unit, as defined in section 148.06 of the Revised Code, and that have been transmitted to the governing board, as defined in that section, during the marriage and any income that is derived from the investment of those moneys during the marriage.

And, actually, we disclose all assets and liabilities to the Court, whether marital or separate, and then we determine which should be excluded and which should be included before we do a division. 

Also, just because an asset is something that you cannot touch right now, such as a retirement plan, does not mean that it cannot be divided.  For the purpose of dividing assets for a divorce, we can get court orders that divide most pensions.  Even if we cannot actually divide the pension, we do consider the value of the pension when make a determination regarding the division of assets and liabilities.  For example, one party may get the home, which has a net equity of $56,000 and the other party may get the retirement account, which has a value of $56,000.  Even if the employer has said that the account is not vested, it can still be divided.

Therefore, we start with everything in the pot, then we take out the separate property (see the next question), and then we divide. 

In Ohio, separate property is defined by the statute.  Found at R.C.3105.171(6)(a), separate property means:

(i) An inheritance by one spouse by bequest, devise, or descent during the course of the marriage;

(ii) Any real or personal property or interest in real or personal property that was acquired by one spouse prior to the date of the marriage;

(iii) Passive income and appreciation acquired from separate property by one spouse during the marriage;

(iv) Any real or personal property or interest in real or personal property acquired by one spouse after a decree of legal separation issued under section 3105.17 of the Revised Code;

(v) Any real or personal property or interest in real or personal property that is excluded by a valid antenuptial agreement;

(vi) Compensation to a spouse for the spouse's personal injury, except for loss of marital earnings and compensation for expenses paid from marital assets;

(vii) Any gift of any real or personal property or of an interest in real or personal property that is made after the date of the marriage and that is proven by clear and convincing evidence to have been given to only one spouse.

How is that for an easy to understand definition.  Believe me, it is not always easy to determine these things, particularly the issue pertaining to passive income.  However, if you think that there is anything that might be separate property, go ahead and ask your attorney.  It is important to protect your rights to that property.  Even if you do not want the property anymore, you can still use that as a bargaining tool if necessary.

This is really a question asking about financial misconduct.

In Ohio, financial misconduct is more than just failing to manage money properly.  It is the dissipation, destruction, concealment, nondisclosure, or fraudulent disposition of assets.  This usually means that there has to be an intent to hide the assets from the other spouse.  In addition, financial misconduct can be claimed if money is spend on someone romantically other than the spouse, because having an affair is a non-marital purpose.  However, it is rarely worth the expense of proving financial misconduct under those circumstances, although I did once encounter a case where the self-employed spouse had used the business to purchase a home for the paramour.  That was certainly worth pursuing.  Financial misconduct does not include drinking the money away or gambling it away, unless you can prove that the intent was to destroy the money itself.  

So the answer to the question is probably not, but sometimes it is worth pursuing.  This is very fact specific and would require that you analyze it with the advice of an attorney.

Do you have to?  No.

Should you?  Well, it depends.  If your divorce is completely uncomplicated and straight forward and you and your spouse can work things out, you may not have to hire an attorney.  But the paperwork now required to be filed by the Courts to make sure that all of the assets and liabilities are disclosed, along with the requirement in a lot of counties to e-file, coupled with other complicated issues, such as how to divide some of the assets, may make it very worthwhile to hire an attorney. 

I have no problem with someone coming to me with a plan for the divorce, including the shared parenting plan, who just needs someone to look over things.  However, if you file the wrong things, your case may get dismissed, and you will problably make a lot of trips to the courthouse and spend a lot of time trying to fix things, all the while having to take time off from work.  Even worse, your divorce may get granted and then later you might find out that if you had used an attorney you would have actually save money.  Decisions made regarding a divorce are final and cannot be revisited by the Court once they are made final.  Even though the Court will retain jurisdiction to change custody or visitation issues, in Ohio you will still have to prove that there is a change of circumstances that warrants a change of custody or visitation. 

You should at least discuss the case with an attorney so that you understand what rights you are giving up.  I have been able to review these agreements for clients and only charged for the review.  That way, you can make a decision regarding whether it is worth hiring an attorney.  It is never a good thing when someone comes to me after a divorce has been made final and things just went wrong.  There are so many technical things that could have gone wrong, like failing to file objections or a request for findings of fact and conclusions of law.  Don't know what that is?  That is exactly my point. 

And while you might be able to Google or Bing your way into knowledge about this, it is still a different matter to actually know all the strategies that should be employed in a particular situation unless you are a seasoned attorney.  Just like you can learn a new skill on YouTube, such as how to install a roof, you might encounter problems along the way that you will not know how to address or that you might not even identify as problems and then later, when you have to have the roof completely replaced, you will end up paying much more than if you had an attorney look it over in the first place.

If there is a huge disparity in the income between the parties, it is possible that the party with the much greater income would pay the attorneys fees.  However, in most cases, each party is responsible for his or her own attorneys fees. This is because once the assets are divided, each party has access to resources to pay those fees.

Sometimes the only resource for paying for an attorney is a cash advance on a credit card.  That is certainly permissible, but should also be disclosed.  When the  assets are divided, the amount of debt that was incurred may be treated as an advance against the division of assets under this circumstance and not necessarily as a debt that gets divided between the parties.  If one party uses an asset, such as a savings account, to pay the attorneys fees, and the other uses a credit card, the Court will typically even that out or at least treat it in such a way that will result in a fair distribution.

With respect to the relationship between the attorney and the client, most attorneys will require that you provide them with a retainer and will tell you that they might get attorneys fees for you, which means that the other party may be ordered to reimburse the fees.  This does not mean that the fees are automatically going to be paid by the other party.

No.  The division is supposed to be equitable, which means fair, not necessarily equal, although often it is an equal division.  Under Ohio R.C. 3105.171, the Court is supposed to consider several factors when determining how to divide the assets and liabilities.  These are:

(1) The duration of the marriage;

(2) The assets and liabilities of the spouses;

(3) The desirability of awarding the family home, or the right to reside in the family home for reasonable periods of time, to the spouse with custody of the children of the marriage;

(4) The liquidity of the property to be distributed;

(5) The economic desirability of retaining intact an asset or an interest in an asset;

(6) The tax consequences of the property division upon the respective awards to be made to each spouse;

(7) The costs of sale, if it is necessary that an asset be sold to effectuate an equitable distribution of property;

(8) Any division or disbursement of property made in a separation agreement that was voluntarily entered into by the spouses;

(9) Any retirement benefits of the spouses, excluding the social security benefits of a spouse except as may be relevant for purposes of dividing a public pension;

(10) Any other factor that the court expressly finds to be relevant and equitable.

Notice that the last on is any other factor that is relevant and equitable.  That pretty much means everything. 

While an "equal" division of marital property is the goal usually, particularly since under Ohio law we consider each spouse as having contributed equally, the point of these factors is to make things really equal if possible.  For example, if an asset can not be cashed out or if cashing it out will result in tax consequences, then it is not dollar for dollar the same as a simple savings account.  The equity in a home may not be the same as a retirement account because of the costs of hiring a broker to sell the home.  These are all considerations.  In addition, we may not want to divide an asset right now.  If the children are in high school, we may want to keep them in the home and not sell or divide it until after the youngest has graduated.  An experienced Ohio divorce lawyer can help sort through these things and work them out to serve your best interest.

Some matters can sit and wait until the divorce is final, which may take up to a year or longer.  Other things cannot.  There might be a need to sell the house right away, or one spouse may need spousal support or child support while the case is pending, or the parties may not be able to agree on the parenting schedule, so that needs to be established right away, at least until the divorce becomes final.

This is why we have what are called temporary orders.  There can be a temporary order to address almost every situation, including a temporary order that neither party incur debt in the other party's name while the case is pending. or orders regarding where the children will live, who is going to make the house payment, who gets to stay in the house, or how certain bills will be paid.  These orders are designed to help everyone live their lives while the case is pending, but often the temporary order becomes the final order, so it is important that the temporary orders be put in place properly.  In many counties in Ohio, this involves filing affidavits with the Court (if the parties cannot agree) and having the Court make a ruling on these issues. 

Again, there are too many possible options, so it is important to consult with an attorney to better understand how this would apply to your particular situation.