A No-Fault Uncontested Divorce with a Negotiated Property Settlement

Many people assume that getting divorced means at least one trip to a courthouse. This case is a straightforward example of why that isn't true in Florida. The couple had no children together, no real estate to divide (their home had always been one spouse's separate property), and no joint bank accounts or retirement funds — just two vehicles and a shared understanding of how they wanted to handle a settlement between them.

Rather than alimony, the settlement agreement called for one spouse to pay the other a fixed total amount: part of it up front as a lump sum, with the balance paid in equal monthly installments over roughly a year and a half. Structuring it this way, instead of open-ended alimony, gave both spouses a clear, finite end date and a predictable number to plan around. Each spouse also kept the vehicle already in their name, and each kept their own individual retirement account and debts — a clean, symmetrical split that made the rest of the settlement easy to agree on.

The entire signing process happened remotely. After reviewing their documents by email, both spouses met separately with an independent, Florida-commissioned online notary over video call to have their signatures notarized — no joint appointment, no drive to an office, no need to coordinate schedules around a single in-person meeting.

From the day the couple hired the firm to the day their Final Judgment was entered took 51 days. And once their completed, notarized packet was submitted to the court, the judge reviewed and entered the Final Judgment the very same day — a good illustration of how much of the timeline in an uncontested case comes down to how quickly a clean, complete packet can be put together, not how long the court itself takes to act on it.