3

Launching a divorce war
Cost: $49,000 to $188,000

Spouses can't always avoid a divorce, but they can take steps to reduce the financial impact. Hiring a lawyer can be a good idea to make sure your interests are represented. But the more issues you want to slug out, the more billable hours you'll run up. (The rate in big metro areas such as Los Angeles can be $475 an hour.)

When Peace Talks, a Los Angeles-based mediation service, compared the costs of court-litigated and mediated divorce in that city, its estimates ran from $65,000 for a limited contested divorce to $250,000 for a complex, full-courtroom smackdown. Peace Talks says a low-conflict divorce can generally be mediated for about 75 percent less than going to court.

What you can do. Because the intensity of the conflict is a major driver of legal costs, work more toward diplomacy than war, which will increase the viability of the low-cost mediation option. Try hardest to get along on custody, often a hot-button issue. Property settlement is a Solomon-like 50-50 split in most states.