CONSUMER CAUTIONS
LAWYERS, DIVORCE SERVICES – WHO OFFERS WHAT?
Toronto Divorce Services has been providing affordable divorce services for over twenty-five years, far longer than any other divorce service, including even some lawyers who have recently jumped on the band wagon. They may say such things as "filed by an Ontario lawyer" to justify their higher fees, but if they're offering services as owners of a company name rather than as an actual lawyer with LLB or LLP behind their name, and unless you have officially retained them as legal counsel to represent you as lawyers - they have no special status or official legal responsibility toward you other than correctly preparing and filing the legal forms like any other non-lawyer company; it's all in their fine print! As for lawyers that actually do represent you, their fees can range from $250/hour and on up. Ironically though, they don't have to have ever even practiced family law, have kept abreast of its changes or perhaps even remember what they learned from law school twenty years ago! But anyway - that's the law, and that is who can legally advise and represent you, that is if you wish to formally retain them to do so.
The Big Multi-Province / State / Country Document Preparation Companies
"File-them-Yourself" Kits – Assuming they prepare the documents correctly for you (hopefully the first time!) you yourself still have to do all the filing trips - and serve your spouse the divorce documents – more than half the work. And in addition to the fees they charge you, you still have to pay the additional $447 in court costs regardless; the major cost of a simple divorce is always the court costs. Also, though they may have slick looking web-sites - please be cautioned: they use mirror (duplicate) web-sites with the word "Ontario" in their names - to imply they are Ontario companies - but most if not all of these companies are actually based in the U.S. and even as far away as Australia and the U.K. Few are Ontario companies. As a result, you, as a consumer, have little or no legal recourse if you don't get what you paid for - or were led to believe you were paying for - because they are out of the reach of our Ontario courts and consumer protection laws. It is always safer to use a local company.
Hours-long Questionnaires - Plus they require in order to get started that you spend hours filling in five and six page questionnaires of complicated information that, after all your time and effort, is entirely irrelevant for an Ontario divorce anyway - just because it's more convenient for them to use a "one-size-fits-all " form designed to cover all the requirements of every province and state and country they sell to - when all that is really relevant - is the requirements of our own particular courts.
Turned away at court offices - But worse, the divorce documents and court procedures for obtaining a divorce in Ontario are assumed to be standardized throughout the over 50 judicial districts in the Province of Ontario, and in theory, they are at least intended as much as possible to be. However - this is in theory only - the truth is they are not. The local registrar at each court office interprets how the rules should apply and what the documents should look like - and each one interprets them a little bit differently; the result is that clients of these big companies may get turned away at the counter after making the trip(s) and waiting in line because their documents "aren't quite right".
Better to relax instead! - It's a lot of work and risk and uncertainty to save $100 or so - and again, you still have to pay the court costs of $447 which is the major portion of the total cost involved in obtaining your divorce. Much better to relax and let us take care of it all for you!