Don't believe everything you see by J. W. Hodge, Contributing writer   Sitting at home on the couch, waiting for the always late and inconsiderate spouse to come through the door just as you were sealing the last bowl of cold dinner that sat on the table for hours, you realize, "I don't want to wait anymore." In the made-for-television movie that you have been watching for the last hour, the unhappy couple gives up and drives to Las Vegas to end it all. Looks easy! All over in a matter of minutes and a few hours of driving. It's not that simple. At first, it seems as though you will be relaxing and back into the dating pool by the end of the week, but then you look into divorce in Nevada. "You have to be a resident for six weeks," Shawn Hill said. The long lived thought that Nevada was the place to ditch your spouse in a hurry has been crushed by reality. It is a Nevada state law that you are a legal resident for at least a period of six weeks before you are even eligible to file. You also have to have proof in the form of an affidavit from someone else who is also a resident of Nevada and who is willing to be a witness to the fact that you have lived here for that time. There is a good side. After you wait the six weeks, you only have to wait for the processing and you are well on your way to jumping back into the wonderful world of dating. When you begin the process of paperwork you have to start with filing a complaint. There are two possible choices in Nevada, you can file on your own and have your spouse served with the papers, or you can file a joint petition together. When you file on your own it will cost you more. To file a complaint it will cost you $145 and then you have to wait for your spouse to answer within the next 20 days. Once your spouse files it is going to cost another $73 to file the answer. The cost of filing the answer is eliminated when both parties are filing together because the answer is already there. In the situation of a joint petition as well as a single file, you have to declare the facts of the marriage that are causing you to get a divorce. Once the file goes through in either situation, a court date is set. This date acts as a deadline to come to a solution and move on or, not agree and force the situation to go to trial. Nevada is a community property state, which means anything that you acquire during your marriage is going to be divided in half in the event of a divorce. The whole idea of the community property law and alimony is to leave people on an equal footing. The lifestyle that people have become accustomed to is truly a factor in determining the amount that people will have to give up or receive. With each new factor of the divorce comes a complication. Children, assets, property and so on bring new and sometimes very challenging aspects to each case. "We have people fighting over everything from the bathroom décor to the little piggy cutting board in the kitchen," Genevieve DeLucchi a legal assistant said. We have all seen how bitter divorces can become, but it seems that only the bitterness and the six week period are the only time consuming parts to a divorce in Nevada. "The process is simple, it's the people who are difficult," DeLucchi said.     copyright May 1998 Nevada Outpost http://www.jour.unr.edu/outpost