Yes! When you choose to divorce as adults, setting aside all the emotional baggage, you can absolutely get divorced without attorneys. That isn’t to say that you don’t need someone with legal experience to help you negotiate your property division and child custody issues, but that someone can be a mediator, an experienced legal professional trained to help people make decisions that are right for them, rather than that put money in their attorney’s pockets. Learn more about mediated divorce here.

Collaborative Divorce is a shorthand way of referring to a divorce that is conducted under the Texas Collaborative Family Law Act. This law encourages individuals to embrace peaceable resolutions of their dispute with the help of specially trained professionals, including two lawyers, a financial professional, and a neutral mental health professional. Working as a team, an equitable resolution is negotiated without resorting to litigation. In the event that the team is unable to reach an equitable resolution, the team is dissolved and new counsel must be engaged to take the divorce to court. Learn more about collaborative divorce here.

On 26 June 2015, the Supreme Court answered “yes!” The rest of the country has been a bit slower to respond. And the response goes both ways. Now everyone has the equality that the law guarantees, but were we careful with what we wished for?

Many family law attorneys championed marriage equality, not because it was the right thing to do, but because the US divorce rate hovers at 50%. If more people get married, more people will get divorced, and that means more money for the lawyers.

Similarly, although marriage equality means that both parents’ names can be on the birth certificate regardless of sex, Texas parenting laws haven’t caught up and could change at any minute, so a second parent adoption is the only way to ensure parental rights survive an election year.

So before racing to the courthouse for a marriage license, please talk to a professional about a pre-nup. It’s the only way to be sure. Learn more about LGBT family law here.

Whenever I think about divorce, my mind conjures up the scene from the iconic John Hughes film Sixteen Candles, where Jim Baker consoles Samantha, saying: “That’s why they call them crushes. If they were easy, they’d call them something else.” Divorces are like crushes; they suck! If everything was great, you probably wouldn’t be getting divorced.

But once all these emotions come into play, it’s hard to stop them from affecting your decision-making. Anger drives us to make someone pay. We must win at all costs. And those costs are typically the legal fees, as individuals spend hundreds of dollars to gain pennies on principle. The simple truth is, there is no winning in a divorce, and the only one who gets paid is the lawyer. Learn more about eliminating emotionally inflated legal costs here.

From the legal point of view, LLCs and Corporations are almost identical. The real differences show up in management and taxes.

In short, a corporation is owned by Shareholders and governed by a Board of Directors, who are not necessarily the same people. An LLC is typically owned and governed by the same people. Both enjoy limited liability, but they are taxed very differently. A corporation pays taxes on its income, and its owners pay taxes on dividends, leading to the commonly called “double taxation.” LLCs are taxed on the flow-through method of partnerships.

So if you’ve just decided to make an idea a reality, your first calls should be to your accountant and your business mentor, who can help you understand the business side of this decision before you spend money on the legal side. Learn more about starting a company here.