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We are using this legal assistance my BPDw's friend recommended to file for divorce. We intent to do this collaboratively. I have not met her and only corresponded to her via emailed. I find her fickle and not putting much priority into the work. The first step is she suppose to send the paper (from my wife) to court for filing. When the paperwork comes back from court she will serve it to me.

She say this one month ago and then nothing happened. I prompted her by email last week and she say, oops, I am really going to file it last Tuesday. Now it is Wednesday and I am still waiting to hear from her.

For those who have done it (California USA), what is the time it takes in for these steps? I want to figure out if the delay caused by her or by the bureaucracy. I would have fired her if I can go back to the beginning. But wife is very emotional and I don't want to rock the boat. I want to make sure she is actively working on this and not sitting on it for no reason.

In my state you can go online (to the county's clerk website) and see if a court case has been opened.

When my DH was served for a RO it took almost a week before the court case was opened and DH was served. uBPDbm filed with the clerk, paid the fee for a sheriff to serve, then it got sent to the sheriff's office in her county, which had to transfer to the sheriff's office in our county, and then they had to find someone who was available to come to our house.

If the legal aide is the one serving you, then it shouldn't take any more than a day I would think though.

I live in CA.  Papers signed and filed on a Wednesday, served the following Monday.  No reason it should take as long as you're experiencing.

In most cases it's not good to leave a disordered spouse in charge of a divorce.  Inaction is one of the many risks.

If it's this much trouble at the beginning over something that is relatively routine, I would jump ship and find someone else. Last thing you need entered into this equation is an incompetent lawyer.

Collaborative divorce can be tricky when there is a mental illness like the PDs we experience. You feel good about it?

This thing seems so imminently begin to roll I will give her a few more days. If after saying "I apologize (for doing nothing for a month). I will send the paper to the court on a specific day" and she still have done nothing, then I have no reason to trust her anymore.

I just need to manage this with my BPDw. Last time after the paper went into a black hole for a month I sent an email addressing all of us asking "hey, how is this thing going?" My BPDw took it totally personal. She was saying I have already made her so miserable after I left now I am trying to kill her or something, all reacting to my prompt to the paralegal. I still think the best course of action is for us to work cooperatively so I hope I don't need to replace her. For what I heard from you, there doesn't seems to be any technicality or complication. So c'mon just do you damn work and stop making the already miserable process even worst! I want to admonish her in private but couldn't because I always include very one in our communication so that we all understand we are doing this together. >

One of the problems many non-BPDs have is appeasement. It's part of the dysfunctional dynamic of a BPD relationship. It sounds like you are hoping that if a little bit of appeasement works, then a lot will work. Part of the healing process for many of us is learning that appeasement does not work when there are strings attached.

It's possible that your wife is not a high-conflict personality and it may work for you both to go with a collaborative lawyer. If I were trying to do what you are attempting to accomplish, I would make for darn sure that collaborative lawyer was exceptional at her job.

I know this is stressful and you want to avoid conflict. Sometimes, we have to accept that there will be conflict, and have strategies to mitigate it, not avoid it altogether.