The stages of a divorce follow a predictable sequence in every state: you confirm you qualify to file, submit a petition, serve your spouse, request temporary orders if you need them, exchange financial information through discovery, negotiate or mediate a settlement, resolve property, custody, and support (either by agreement or at trial), wait out your state’s mandatory cooling-off period, and attend a final hearing where the judge signs the decree. How long each stage takes depends on how much you and your spouse disagree, but even the most cooperative case runs at least several weeks because of the waiting periods built into state law.
Confirming You Qualify to File
Before you prepare any paperwork, check two things: residency and grounds. Every state requires that you have lived there for a continuous period before its courts will take your case. Those periods range from as little as six weeks to a full year. If you recently moved, you may have to wait, or file in the state where your spouse still lives.
You also pick the legal basis for ending the marriage. Every state offers no-fault divorce, usually phrased as “irreconcilable differences” or “irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.” No-fault means neither spouse has to prove the other did anything wrong. Some states also allow fault grounds like adultery, abandonment, or cruelty, but those require evidence and tend to make the case longer and more expensive. Most people file no-fault for that reason.
Filing the Petition
The spouse who starts the case is the petitioner. You file a petition for dissolution of marriage, which asks for identifying information about both spouses and any children, the date and place of the marriage, your grounds, and what you want the court to do about property, custody, and support. Most court websites post the forms.
Pull your financial records together before you fill anything out. Recent tax returns, pay stubs, bank and investment statements, deeds, mortgage documents, and a list of debts will all be needed before the case is over. Having them organized early saves scrambling when disclosure deadlines arrive.
Filing means submitting the petition to the court clerk and paying a filing fee, typically between $100 and $450 depending on jurisdiction. Many courts now require electronic filing. If you can’t afford the fee, most courts have a waiver for people who meet income thresholds.
Serving Your Spouse and Waiting for a Response
Once the clerk stamps your petition and assigns a case number, your spouse has to be formally notified. This is service of process, and it follows specific rules. In most cases a process server or sheriff’s deputy hands the papers to your spouse. Some jurisdictions allow service by mail with a signed acknowledgment. When a spouse genuinely can’t be located after reasonable effort, courts may permit service by publication in a local newspaper.
After being served, the respondent typically has 20 to 30 days to file a response. The exact window depends on the state. In the response, the respondent can agree with the petition, dispute specific requests, or file a counter-petition with different terms.
If Your Spouse Doesn’t Respond
If the respondent misses the deadline, you can ask the court for a default judgment. A default lets the case proceed as though your spouse had no objections, though a judge still reviews the petition and holds a hearing to make sure the requested terms are reasonable. The rule exists so one spouse can’t stall the case indefinitely by refusing to engage. A spouse who later shows up with a good reason for missing the deadline can sometimes get the default set aside.
Temporary Orders
Divorce cases often run for months, and life doesn’t pause while you wait. Either spouse can ask the court for temporary orders covering custody and visitation, temporary child support, temporary spousal support, exclusive use of the family home, and payment of ongoing bills like the mortgage or insurance.
Many jurisdictions also impose automatic restraining orders the moment the case is filed and the other spouse is served. These block either spouse from selling or hiding marital assets, taking on unreasonable new debt, canceling insurance policies, or dropping children from coverage. Violating a temporary order can bring sanctions, contempt findings, and attorney fee awards. Temporary orders are the ground rules that keep the household stable while the larger questions get sorted out.
Discovery
Discovery is the formal exchange of information between the parties. It matters most when one spouse controlled the finances during the marriage, because it forces full disclosure. The main tools:
- Interrogatories: written questions each spouse answers under oath about income, assets, debts, and employment history.
- Requests for production: formal demands for documents like bank records, business ledgers, tax returns, and employment contracts.
- Requests for admission: statements one side asks the other to confirm or deny, which narrows what’s actually in dispute.
- Depositions: in-person testimony under oath in front of a court reporter.
- Subpoenas: court orders requiring third parties like banks or employers to produce records or appear for testimony.
Not every case needs all of these. When both spouses are transparent, informal document exchanges may be enough. Discovery turns intensive when there are business interests, hidden accounts, or serious disagreements about asset values. Most legal fees accumulate here, so understanding the actual scope your case needs can save real money.
Settlement and Mediation
The great majority of divorce cases settle without a trial. Settlement talks happen in many forms, from informal discussion between attorneys to structured mediation with a neutral third party. Many courts require mediation before they’ll schedule a trial, especially for custody disputes.
A mediator helps both spouses identify priorities, explore options, and work toward agreements on property, custody, and support. The mediator doesn’t take sides or make decisions. When you reach agreement, the mediator or your attorneys draft a settlement agreement that both spouses sign. Once a judge approves it, that agreement becomes a binding court order.
The advantage of settling is control. You and your spouse decide the outcome instead of handing that power to a judge who doesn’t know your family. Settlements also tend to be faster and much cheaper than trials. This is where a clear picture from discovery pays off, because you can’t make informed compromises without knowing what’s on the table.
Dividing Property and Debts
Property division follows one of two systems depending on the state. Nine states use community property rules, where the default is a roughly equal split of what was earned or acquired during the marriage. The remaining 41 states and the District of Columbia use equitable distribution, where the court divides property in a way it considers fair, which does not necessarily mean equal.
Under either system, the first step is classifying each asset and debt as marital or separate. Property owned before the marriage, inheritances received individually, and gifts made specifically to one spouse are generally separate and stay with that spouse. Anything acquired during the marriage with marital funds is typically marital, even if only one spouse’s name is on the account or title. Things get complicated when separate and marital property are mixed, such as using an inheritance for the down payment on a jointly held home.
In equitable distribution states, judges weigh the length of the marriage, each spouse’s income and earning capacity, age and health, and contributions to the household including homemaking. The outcome is sometimes a 60-40 or 70-30 split rather than 50-50.
Retirement benefits earned during the marriage are marital property in most states, even if only one spouse’s name is on the account. Splitting a 401(k), 403(b), or pension plan requires a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, which directs the plan administrator to transfer a portion to the other spouse without triggering early withdrawal penalties or immediate tax.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 414 – Definitions and Special Rules IRAs can be divided through a direct transfer between accounts based on the divorce decree, without a QDRO.
Property transfers between spouses incident to divorce are not taxable events under federal law. No gain or loss is recognized, and the receiving spouse takes over the original tax basis.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1041 – Transfers of Property Between Spouses or Incident to Divorce This matters when you compare offers: an appreciated $500,000 house with a $200,000 basis is not the same as $500,000 in cash, because the spouse who takes the house will owe capital gains tax on the gain when they eventually sell.
Custody and Child Support
For parents, custody is often the hardest part of the case. Courts decide custody based on the best interests of the child, weighing the quality of each parent’s home environment, each parent’s relationship with the child, the child’s adjustment to school and community, the mental and physical health of both parents, and in some states the child’s own preference if they’re old enough.
Custody has two parts. Physical custody governs where the child lives. Legal custody governs who makes major decisions about education, healthcare, and religious upbringing. Each can be sole or joint, and joint physical custody doesn’t always mean a 50-50 time split; it might be 60-40 or follow a schedule shaped around school, work, and travel.
Most courts require a parenting plan that lays out the regular schedule, holiday and vacation arrangements, communication rules between the child and the non-custodial parent, and how parents will handle decision-making disagreements. A plan built collaboratively tends to produce arrangements both parents can actually live with.
Child support follows statutory guidelines in every state. The income shares model, used by 41 states, estimates what both parents would have spent on the child if they lived together and divides that cost proportionally based on each parent’s income.3National Conference of State Legislatures. Child Support Guideline Models The remaining states use a percentage-of-income model based primarily on the paying parent’s earnings. All states factor in the child’s health insurance costs, and most adjust for childcare, shared custody time, and obligations to other children.
Spousal Support
Spousal support, also called alimony or maintenance, is financial assistance paid by one spouse to the other during or after the divorce. It isn’t automatic. Courts award it when one spouse has significantly less earning power than the other and needs help maintaining a reasonable standard of living or transitioning to financial independence. Judges weigh the length of the marriage, each spouse’s income and earning capacity, the standard of living during the marriage, age and health, and contributions including career sacrifices like staying home to raise children.
Support comes in several forms: temporary support during the case, rehabilitative support for a set period while the recipient gains education or job skills, and, less commonly now, permanent support after long marriages when one spouse is unlikely to become self-supporting due to age or disability. Some states also recognize reimbursement support, compensating a spouse who funded the other’s education or career advancement.
For any divorce or separation agreement executed after December 31, 2018, alimony payments are not deductible by the payer and are not taxable income to the recipient.4Internal Revenue Service. Publication 504 (2025), Divorced or Separated Individuals If your agreement predates 2019 and hasn’t been modified to adopt the new rules, the old tax treatment still applies.
Trial
If negotiation and mediation don’t resolve every issue, the case goes to trial. A divorce trial works like other civil trials: both sides present evidence, call witnesses, and make arguments. There’s no jury. The judge decides whatever remains in dispute, whether that’s the value of a business, a custody arrangement, the amount of spousal support, or all of it.
Trials are expensive, stressful, and slow. Attorney prep, expert witness fees, and multiple days in court add up quickly, and you lose control of the outcome because the judge may reach conclusions neither spouse expected. Experienced family lawyers will say most cases that actually go to trial involve either a genuinely contested custody dispute or a significant disagreement over the value or classification of assets. Absent one of those, settling is almost always the better path.
Waiting Period and the Final Decree
Even after every issue is resolved, most states impose a mandatory waiting period before the judge can sign the final decree. These cooling-off periods range from 20 days to six months, with 60 to 90 days being the most common. The clock usually starts when the petition is filed, so in lengthy cases the waiting period may already have passed by the time you’re ready to finalize.
The last step is a hearing, sometimes called a prove-up, where the judge reviews the settlement agreement or, after a trial, prepares to issue rulings. In an uncontested divorce the hearing is usually brief. You or your attorney confirm the basic facts under oath: that you meet the residency requirements, that the marriage is irretrievably broken, and that you understand and agree to the settlement terms. If the judge finds the agreement fair and legally sufficient, they sign the final judgment or decree of dissolution.
The decree is the document that officially ends the marriage. It restores both parties to single status and contains enforceable orders about property division, custody, and support. Get a certified copy from the clerk’s office. You’ll need it to change beneficiary designations, retitle property, update your name if applicable, and handle the administrative tasks that follow a divorce.
What Changes After the Decree Is Signed
Your tax filing status changes the year the divorce is finalized. If your decree is signed by December 31, you file as single (or head of household if you qualify) for that entire tax year. If you’re still legally married on December 31, you must file as married, either jointly or separately. Generally the custodial parent claims the children as dependents, though the custodial parent can release the claim to the noncustodial parent by signing a written declaration that the noncustodial parent attaches to their return.4Internal Revenue Service. Publication 504 (2025), Divorced or Separated Individuals
If you were covered under your spouse’s employer-sponsored health plan, divorce is a qualifying event for COBRA continuation coverage. You must notify the plan within 60 days of the divorce, and you can then stay on the same plan for up to 36 months.5U.S. Department of Labor. FAQs on COBRA Continuation Health Coverage for Workers You’ll pay the full premium, meaning both the employee’s share and the employer’s former contribution, plus a 2% administrative fee. COBRA applies to private-sector and state or local government plans with 20 or more employees.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 US Code 1161 – Plans Must Provide Continuation Coverage For smaller employers or plans outside COBRA, check whether your state offers a mini-COBRA equivalent.
COBRA is a bridge, not a long-term solution. Use the 36-month window to secure your own coverage through an employer plan, the health insurance marketplace, or another source. Missing the 60-day notification deadline means losing the option entirely, which is one of the easier mistakes to make during a divorce and one of the more expensive ones.