How much do Illinois divorce attorneys charge for paperwork?

The intake meeting went fine. Your attorney is competent, the office felt calm, and you signed the retainer agreement. Then the first bill arrived. Six hundred dollars for "Preparation of financial affidavit, partial." You scroll down. Another four hundred for "Document review and organization, pay stubs and bank statements." The math is starting to feel wrong.

Here is what those line items actually are and why they cost what they cost.

The structure of paperwork billing

Almost every Illinois family-law firm bills paperwork prep against the attorney's hourly rate. Hourly rates in 2026:

• Paralegal: $125 to $175 per hour.
• Junior associate: $200 to $275 per hour.
• Mid-level associate or solo: $275 to $375 per hour.
• Senior partner: $375 to $475 per hour.
• Top-tier Chicago partner: $500 to $750 per hour.

Most firms blend the rate — your paralegal does the document review at $150 an hour, your associate drafts the form at $275, your partner spot-checks the result at $425. The bill arrives looking like one number, but the work was split across the team.

The 13.3.1 financial affidavit

The single largest paperwork line item in a typical contested case. Total time:

• Simple case — one income source, one or two bank accounts, no business, no investments outside a 401(k): 4 to 6 hours.
• Typical case — two income sources or commission income, three to five accounts, modest investments: 6 to 10 hours.
• Complex case — multiple income sources, small business income, brokerage accounts, premarital property to classify: 10 to 20 hours.

At a blended rate of $250 to $375 per hour, that is:

• Simple: $1,000 to $2,250 per draft.
• Typical: $1,500 to $3,750 per draft.
• Complex: $2,500 to $7,500 per draft.

Most contested cases produce two to three drafts. The math adds up fast.

Where the hours actually go: 60 to 80 percent of the billed time on a 13.3.1 is data assembly — reading bank statements, categorizing transactions, parsing pay stubs into gross-vs-net structure, reconciling the result against the form's line items. The 20 to 40 percent that is left is the actual drafting and review. This is why preparing your own first draft saves so much money: the expensive part is the part you can do yourself.

Discovery responses

Once the case is filed, the other side sends discovery — Interrogatories, Requests to Produce, Requests to Admit. Illinois Supreme Court Rule 213 allows up to 30 interrogatories without leave of court. Requests to Produce can be open-ended. A typical first set of discovery responses takes:

• Paralegal time gathering documents and drafting objections: 4 to 12 hours at $150.
• Attorney time refining responses, asserting privilege, finalizing: 2 to 6 hours at $300.

Total: $1,200 to $3,600 for a typical discovery response set. Cases that draw three or four sets of discovery across the litigation can put the discovery line item at $5,000 to $15,000.

The parenting plan / allocation judgment

Required in every Illinois case with minor children. The parenting plan covers decision-making (education, healthcare, religion, extracurriculars) and parenting time (the actual schedule).

Drafting time varies enormously based on conflict:

• Agreed plan, parents on the same page: 2 to 4 hours, $500 to $1,500.
• Contested plan with mediated agreement: 6 to 12 hours, $1,800 to $4,500.
• High-conflict plan with multiple revisions: 15 to 40 hours, $4,500 to $15,000.

The marital settlement agreement

The MSA is the contract that resolves all financial issues — asset division, debt allocation, maintenance, life insurance requirements, tax allocations. In an Illinois case, the MSA is typically drafted after settlement is reached or near the end of trial.

• Simple agreed MSA: 4 to 8 hours, $1,200 to $3,000.
• Typical contested-then-settled MSA: 10 to 20 hours, $3,000 to $7,500.
• Complex MSA with business buyouts and structured payments: 25 to 60 hours, $7,500 to $25,000.

Exhibits, Bates stamps, indices

Every contested case produces an exhibit file — the documents that get cited at hearings and trial. Bates-stamping (putting a unique sequential number on every page), assembling exhibit binders, building an index that maps Bates numbers to exhibits.

Mostly paralegal work, but it takes hours. A typical contested case runs $500 to $2,000 in exhibit prep. A trial case can run $2,000 to $6,000.

The total paperwork line, summed up

For a typical Illinois contested case with kids, two or three financial affidavit drafts, normal discovery, an agreed parenting plan, and an MSA negotiated to settlement:

• 13.3.1 drafts (2 to 3): $3,000 to $11,000.
• Discovery responses: $1,500 to $5,000.
• Parenting plan: $1,800 to $4,500.
• MSA: $3,000 to $7,500.
• Exhibits and indices: $500 to $2,000.

Total paperwork: $9,800 to $30,000. That is the document line of your divorce. It does not include hearings, depositions, mediation, or trial. Just the paperwork.

How to make it smaller

There are three honest levers.

Lever 1: Draft your own 13.3.1 first.

You will not draft the parenting plan or the MSA yourself — those need a lawyer. But the 13.3.1 is the single largest paperwork item and the one where the data assembly is on you, not your attorney, anyway. Walking in with a complete first draft typically saves 60 to 80 percent of the attorney time on that line. Across two or three drafts, that is $4,000 to $9,000 saved.

Lever 2: Organize before you upload.

Hand your attorney documents in folders that match the discovery categories, not a pile of PDFs named "Scan 27.pdf." The paralegal billing hours go down. This alone saves $300 to $1,200 on a typical case.

Lever 3: Settle the easy stuff fast.

The single biggest cost driver is contested time. Every issue you resolve at mediation instead of in front of a judge is hours off the bill. Even small wins ("we agree on the parenting schedule, we'll fight about the house") cut the contested hour count meaningfully.

Where Casefile fits

Casefile is designed against lever 1. It takes the data-assembly step that costs you $1,500 to $4,800 per affidavit draft at attorney rates and runs it for $147 one-time. You get a clean document-backed 13.3.1 ready to hand to your attorney for review.

The math is uncomfortable for attorneys to acknowledge but plain on the page: the assembly work you are paying $250 to $400 an hour for is identical assembly work, regardless of who does it. The question is whether you pay your attorney to do it or whether you do it (or have software do it) and pay your attorney only to review and refine.

Most Illinois family-law attorneys I have spoken to actually prefer the second model. They want to do the legal-judgment work — what should the parenting schedule be, how should we negotiate the house, what is the settlement leverage. They do not particularly enjoy categorizing your Target transactions.

See the 13.3.1 line-by-line guide for the form itself and the full divorce-cost breakdown for everything beyond paperwork.