All of the California divorce forms are in Adobe format. That means that you have to have the free Adobe Acrobat reader installed on your computer if you're going to do your own divorce. You can download a copy of it by going to http://www.adobe.com/ and following the instructions there.

If you've never used Adobe Acrobat Reader, you may find it a little frustrating at first. It is not at all like normal word processors, such as Word Perfect or MS Word. It's actually an image based system, so you're actually altering images on your screen and then printing them out.

It has a LOT of features, which you may want to play with at sometime. For the time being, though, there are just a few things that you need to know in order to process your divorce forms.

The first thing you need to know is how to download an Adobe text file - called a pdf. file - from the internet. There are two ways to do it. First, you can click on the link with the left hand button on your mouse. You'll have a little delay while the Adobe reader opens the file, and then you'll see it on your monitor screen. Then you'll see a small blue icon on the top left-hand side of the Adobe tool bar that's supposed to look like a little floppy disk. Click on that and it will let you save the file to a folder on your computer.

The other way to do it is to RIGHT click on the link with your mouse. Then click on, "save," and then select the folder on your computer where you want to save it. That's a little faster, because it doesn't require the Adobe browser to open the document.

Remember, the Adobe form is not really like a normal word processor form. It's an image and you're changing parts of the image as you type. There are two primary features you'll be dealing with when you're filling in your forms: the text field and the check box. The check box is no big deal - you just click your mouse on the box and Adobe reader puts a check in it.

The text field can be a little more difficult to get used to. Although you can't see them, each line on an Adobe document is actually a box, and you're putting text into that box. Where it's different is that when you get to the end of the line, you don't hit the return key to go to the next line. Instead, you position your cursor on the next line and click it, and then you start typing again.

In the free version of Adobe reader, you cannot save the files once you've typed your information into them. And that means a couple of things for you as the user. One, you need to go ahead and print the files out as you finish them. You can't do part of the form, save it, and then go back and work on it some more. Two, you need to be really, really sure that you've done the form right, before you print it out. And DON'T close the file until you've had a chance to proof read your hard copy and be sure that it's right. Once you close the file, you've got to start all over again if you made a mistake.

Don't get discouraged if you make a few mistakes at first. It takes some getting used to, but it's pretty easy once you do.