By Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce · Published
A contested divorce can run for years and generate hundreds of documents. The people who come through it best aren't the most organized by nature — they're the ones who set up a simple system early and kept feeding it.
By Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce · Published
Complexity kills systems. Use a single location — one cloud folder, backed up — with six subfolders: Correspondence (every letter and email from lawyers), Financial (income, accounts, property, debts), Court (filed documents and orders), Children (schedules, school, medical), Evidence (incident logs, screenshots), and Mine (your notes, questions, drafts).
Name files so they sort themselves: YYYY-MM-DD — who — what. A folder that sorts chronologically by default answers most 'when did that happen' questions without any searching at all.
This system is jurisdiction-neutral: whether you're filing in Ontario or Ohio, the categories are the same, because every family law process runs on income evidence, property evidence, correspondence and dates. Only the form names change.
The most dangerous information in a contested divorce is a date buried inside a paragraph. Filing the letter is not the same as capturing the deadline it contains — one is storage, the other is action.
Keep a single running list of every date any letter, order or agreement has set: what's due, who set it, the source document, and whether it's met. Review it weekly. This one habit prevents the most common and most costly category of self-inflicted damage.
For each disputed issue — the house, support, the schedule, a particular account — keep one page recording what each side has proposed, when, and where that's documented. Update it whenever an offer changes.
Six months in, this ledger is worth more than any individual document. It tells you instantly what's actually agreed, what's still open, and whether a 'new' proposal is genuinely new or a restatement of something already rejected.
Where parenting or conduct is contested, contemporaneous notes carry real weight. Record the date, time, what happened, who was present, and what was said — factually, without characterization. 'Exchange scheduled 6pm, arrived 7:15pm, no notice' is more persuasive than 'he was late again, as always.'
Write it the same day. Notes reconstructed months later are worth far less, and can be attacked as after-the-fact narrative.
Before any meeting with your lawyer or a mediator, prepare one short pack: a chronology, the current issues ledger, the open deadlines, and any new documents since you last met. Lawyers bill for reconstructing your file — arriving organized converts that time into advice.
This is the whole reason SortMyDivorce exists. Every hour your lawyer spends assembling a timeline you could have provided is an hour you paid for at their rate.
One backed-up location, six folders (correspondence, financial, court, children, evidence, your own notes), files named date-first so they sort chronologically, plus two living documents kept separately: a deadline list and an issues ledger.
A dated, factual log written the same day, kept in one file rather than scattered across notes apps and messages. Record what happened rather than how it felt, and keep supporting screenshots with the log entry they relate to.
Digital, backed up, with paper originals kept safe for the few documents that require them — marriage certificates and signed orders. Photograph or scan paper the day it arrives so nothing depends on a single physical copy.
Well past the final order. Support and parenting arrangements can be reviewed or varied years later, and enforcement questions turn on what was originally agreed. Keep the complete file indefinitely; it takes almost no space digitally.
Last reviewed July 2026. Researched and written by Neta, founder of SortMyDivorce. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice — laws, fees and forms change, so please confirm current details with the official sources above or a local family lawyer.
Everything above — the correspondence file, the deadline list, the issues ledger — is exactly what SortMyDivorce builds automatically from your letters, with the quote behind every fact. $39/year.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Laws change and differ by jurisdiction — confirm specifics with a local family lawyer or your court's official website. If you use SortMyDivorce, your letters stay confidential — never shared, never sold.