Getting a divorce is a sequence of tasks, and the things to do when getting a divorce fall into three phases: the preparation you handle before you file, the legal steps you manage while the case is open, and the cleanup you do after the decree is signed. The work you do in the first phase has more impact on your outcome than almost anything that happens in a courtroom. What follows is the order to work through it, and the traps to avoid at each step.
Pull Your Financial Documents First
Before you talk to a lawyer, before you tell your spouse, pull your paperwork together. You need federal and state tax returns for the past three to five years, which show household income over time. IRS transcripts are free through Form 4506-T or instantly from your online IRS account.1Internal Revenue Service. Transcript Types for Individuals and Ways to Order Them Grab at least three months of recent pay stubs to document current earnings and deductions. Get certified copies of birth certificates for you and your children, plus the original marriage license from the vital records office where each event was recorded. Pull statements from every checking, savings, and investment account.
All of this feeds the financial affidavit, a sworn disclosure most courts require from both spouses. It details income, expenses, assets, and debts, and you sign it under penalty of perjury. Judges rely on it heavily when deciding support and property division. Inaccuracies can trigger sanctions or an unfavorable ruling, so having the underlying documents in front of you when you fill it out matters.
Inventory What You Own and What You Owe
A complete inventory is the backbone of any property settlement. For real estate, pull the current deed and get a recent appraisal or a market estimate. Collect titles for vehicles and any other titled property. List valuable personal property like jewelry, art, or collectibles, and get appraisals when the values are high enough to be worth fighting over.
Retirement accounts need extra attention because splitting them is more complicated than dividing a bank balance. Employer-sponsored plans like 401(k)s and pensions require a Qualified Domestic Relations Order. A QDRO is a court order telling the plan administrator to pay a portion of the participant’s benefits to the other spouse.2U.S. Department of Labor. Qualified Domestic Relations Orders: An Overview The order must identify both parties by name and address, name the specific plan, and state the dollar amount or percentage awarded.3U.S. Department of Labor. Qualified Domestic Relations Orders Under ERISA – A Practical Guide to Dividing Retirement Benefits IRAs don’t need a QDRO. They transfer directly between spouses incident to divorce, but the transfer must be documented in the divorce decree or separation agreement or you face tax penalties.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Divorce
Debts matter just as much. Document mortgage balances, home equity lines, car loans, student loans, and credit card balances on both joint and individual accounts. Courts divide debts alongside assets, so missing debt skews the entire settlement and sends people back to court after judgment.
Protect Your Credit Before Anything Else Goes Wrong
This is where people get hurt, and it happens quickly. A spouse can run up a joint credit card, miss a mortgage payment, or empty a shared account while the divorce is pending, and creditors will hold you equally responsible for joint debts regardless of what any court order later says.
Pull your credit report from annualcreditreport.com so you know every account tied to your name. Close or freeze joint credit cards so new charges can’t accumulate. On individual cards where your spouse is an authorized user, call the issuer and remove them. Open a bank account in your own name and start routing your income there. If joint bills still need to be paid during the case, work out a method with your spouse or your attorney, but stop the bleeding on unsecured joint credit as fast as you can.
Keep monitoring your credit the entire time the case is open. Missed payments on joint accounts during a long proceeding can damage your score for years, and “my ex was supposed to pay that” is not an argument credit bureaus accept.
Prepare for Decisions About Your Children
If you have minor children, their needs drive most of the court’s decisions and a large share of your legal costs. Before filing, compile school schedules, medical records, health insurance details, and documentation of regular childcare or extracurricular expenses. That information feeds two key documents: the parenting plan and the child support worksheet.
A parenting plan spells out where the children live during the school year, on weekends, over holidays, and during summer. It also covers how major decisions about education, healthcare, and religious upbringing get made. Courts measure these plans against the best-interests-of-the-child standard, so a detailed and realistic proposal gives you a better shot at the outcome you want.
Child support is usually calculated by formula based on each parent’s income, the number of children, the time-sharing split, and recurring costs like health insurance premiums and childcare. Most states post an online calculator or standardized worksheet. If your income documentation is already organized, running the numbers is straightforward and tells you what to expect.
Know the Tax Rules That Change Your Settlement
Divorce has real tax consequences, and understanding them before you negotiate can save you a significant amount of money.
Transfers Between Spouses Are Tax-Free, But Basis Carries Over
Under federal law, transferring property to a spouse or former spouse as part of a divorce produces no taxable gain or loss at the time of transfer. The receiving spouse inherits the original cost basis.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 26 – 1041 This matters at the negotiating table. A house that looks like a $400,000 asset in settlement might carry a $150,000 cost basis, which means you owe tax on the $250,000 gain when you sell. The same $400,000 held in a different type of account could produce a very different after-tax result. Think in after-tax dollars when comparing assets.
The transfer must happen within one year of the divorce or be clearly related to the divorce. Transfers up to six years after the decree can still qualify if they occur under a divorce or separation instrument.
Alimony Is No Longer Deductible
For any divorce or separation agreement executed after December 31, 2018, alimony is not deductible by the person paying and not taxable to the person receiving.6Internal Revenue Service. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – Individuals The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act set that rule and it remains in effect for 2026.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 26 – 71 (Repealed) Agreements executed before January 1, 2019 are still governed by the old rules unless both parties modify the agreement and expressly opt into the new treatment.
Your Filing Status Depends on December 31
Your tax filing status for the year depends on your marital status on December 31. If the divorce is final by that date, you file as single unless you qualify for head of household. Head of household requires that you paid more than half the cost of maintaining your home for the year, your spouse did not live in your home for the last six months, and your home was the main residence of your dependent child for more than half the year.8Internal Revenue Service. Filing Taxes After Divorce or Separation Head of household comes with a larger standard deduction and better brackets than single, so check whether you qualify.
Choose How You Want to Resolve It
Not every divorce needs a trial. Picking the right process early saves time and money. The options generally come in four shapes:
- Uncontested or simplified dissolution. Available when both spouses agree on property, neither is seeking alimony, and there are no minor children. Some jurisdictions offer a streamlined process with fewer forms and no trial.
- Mediation. A neutral mediator helps both spouses negotiate a settlement. You keep control of the outcome, and the cost is a fraction of litigation. It works when communication hasn’t fully broken down.
- Collaborative divorce. Each spouse hires a collaboratively trained attorney, and both sides commit to settling without court. If talks fail, both attorneys must withdraw, which gives everyone a strong incentive to reach agreement.
- Traditional litigation. The default when significant conflict, hidden assets, or safety concerns rule out negotiation. A judge decides contested issues after both sides present evidence. It is the most expensive and slowest path by a wide margin.
Pick based on how much you actually agree on, how complex your finances are, and whether trust has broken down enough to need a neutral decision-maker.
File, Serve, and Handle the Waiting Period
The case formally begins when you file a petition for dissolution with the court clerk. Filing fees range widely by jurisdiction, from roughly $100 to $450 or more. Fee waivers are available in many courts for people who can’t afford the cost. Electronic filing is accepted in a growing number of jurisdictions.
Then your spouse must receive official notice through service of process. That usually means a private process server or the sheriff’s office delivering the petition and summons. You cannot hand-deliver the papers yourself. Service fees typically run $40 to $100.
Once served, your spouse has a set number of days to file a written response. The deadline varies by state but commonly falls between 20 and 30 days. If no response comes in time, you can ask for a default judgment, and the court may grant the terms you requested without your spouse’s input. Many states also impose a mandatory waiting period between the filing date and the earliest date the court can finalize the divorce. These cooling-off periods range from zero days in about a dozen states to six months in others, with most falling in the 30-to-90-day window.
Ask for Temporary Orders if You Need Them
A divorce can take months or years. If you need financial support, a custody arrangement, or protection from an abusive spouse while the case is pending, you can ask the court for temporary orders. Courts sometimes call this “pendente lite” relief, which means relief during the lawsuit.
Common temporary orders include spousal or child support to cover living expenses, a temporary custody and parenting-time schedule, exclusive use of the marital home for one spouse, asset preservation orders that prevent either side from selling or hiding marital property, and orders requiring both parties to keep existing health, life, and auto insurance in place.
Some states impose automatic restraining orders the moment a divorce is filed, prohibiting both spouses from transferring assets, canceling insurance, or taking on unreasonable debt without court permission or the other party’s written consent. Whether these protections are automatic or you need to request them, the point is the same: keep the financial and custodial status quo intact while the case plays out.
Use Discovery to Verify What Your Spouse Discloses
After the initial paperwork is filed, the case moves into discovery, where each side has the right to demand information and evidence from the other. This is where hidden income, undisclosed accounts, and forgotten debts come out. The main tools are interrogatories (written questions answered under oath), requests for production (demands for specific documents like bank statements and tax returns), depositions (in-person questioning under oath recorded by a court reporter), requests for admission (statements the other side must formally admit or deny), and subpoenas directed at third parties like banks and employers.
Discovery has limits. Requests must be relevant to the issues in the case and cannot be unreasonably burdensome, and most courts set a cutoff date before trial. The thorough job you did gathering your own records at the start pays off here, because you can spot gaps and inconsistencies in what your spouse produces.
After the Decree: Update Everything With Your Ex’s Name On It
Once the divorce is final, a surprising amount of administrative work remains, and skipping it causes problems that are easy to prevent and painful to fix.
Health Insurance
If you were covered under your spouse’s employer-sponsored plan, you lose eligibility when the divorce is finalized. Federal law treats divorce as a qualifying event for COBRA continuation coverage, which lets you stay on the same group plan.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 29 – 1163 COBRA after a divorce lasts up to 36 months, but you pay the full premium, which can be far more than you paid as a dependent. Compare COBRA against marketplace plans and any coverage available through your own job before picking.
Beneficiary Designations and Estate Documents
This is the single most expensive mistake people make after divorce. Life insurance policies, 401(k) accounts, IRAs, bank accounts with payable-on-death designations, and similar assets pass to whoever is named as beneficiary, no matter what the divorce decree says. More than 40 states have “revocation upon divorce” statutes that automatically strip an ex-spouse from wills and sometimes from beneficiary designations. But those statutes have a critical gap. For employer-sponsored retirement plans and group life insurance governed by federal ERISA rules, state revocation laws are preempted. The beneficiary designation on your 401(k) or pension stays in force until you change it yourself, no matter what state you live in. Forget to update a $500,000 life insurance policy and your ex-spouse collects the money, even if you remarried and intended it for your new family.
Review and update every beneficiary designation on every account, every insurance policy, and every transfer-on-death registration. Update your will, revoke any power of attorney naming your ex-spouse, and replace your healthcare directive if your former spouse is listed as your agent.
Social Security
If the marriage lasted at least 10 years, you may be eligible to collect Social Security on your ex-spouse’s earnings record once you reach age 62, as long as you are currently unmarried and your own benefit would be smaller.10Social Security Administration. 5 Things Every Woman Should Know About Social Security Claiming on an ex-spouse’s record doesn’t reduce their benefit or affect a current spouse’s benefit. If you’re close to the 10-year mark when you file for divorce, the timeline is worth factoring in before you finalize.
Name Change
If you’re reverting to a prior name, most divorce decrees include a provision authorizing it. Start at the Social Security Administration, because other agencies verify names through SSA records. Update your Social Security card before you file your next tax return so your name matches IRS records.11USAGov. How to Change Your Name and What Government Agencies to Notify Then update your driver’s license, passport, bank accounts, and employer records. Notify the State Department as soon as possible for an updated passport.