Divorce Filing Fees by State: 18 Read From the Statute, 33 Honest Gaps

Updated August 25, 2026. Quick answer: We read 18 states’ divorce filing fees out of their own statutes this session and published the sentence each one is in. We did not read the other 33, and they are listed with the URL that failed instead of a number. The reason to do it that way is on this page: Wisconsin charges $95 and California charges $435, but three of the 18 cannot be written as one number at all. Illinois sets no statewide amount, Florida sets a ceiling rather than a fee, and Wisconsin’s changes on November 1, 2026.

The 18 we read

Each row links to the section we read and each figure is the number in that section. Where the statute names dissolution, divorce or an action affecting the family specifically, the row says so; where it only sets a general civil filing fee that a divorce also pays, the row says that too.

18 jurisdictions, each read from its own statute on August 25, 2026. Every quoted sentence in this table’s notes is proved a literal substring of the archived bytes before this page is built.

Three states that a one-number table gets wrong in kind

Illinois. The fee schedule statute says the amount “Unless otherwise specified in this Section, the amount of a fee shall be determined by ordinance or resolution of the county board and remitted to the county treasurer to be used for purposes related to the operation of the court system in the county.” There is no statewide Illinois divorce filing fee to publish. A table that prints one has printed a number the legislature declined to set.

Florida. The statute covering chapter 61 – dissolution of marriage – says the party filing “shall pay to the clerk of that court a filing fee of up to $295 in all cases in which there are not more than five defendants and an additional filing fee of up to $2.50 for each defendant in excess of five.” Up to. It is a ceiling. The number a Florida clerk collects is set beneath that ceiling and is not in this statute.

Wisconsin. The published section carries two texts with their effective dates. Today the commencement fee is $95 for an action affecting the family. On November 1, 2026, 2025 Wis. Act 179 raises it to $168 – $73 more. A table with one Wisconsin number and no date is wrong on one side of that date, and there is no way to tell which side by looking at it.

What kind of number each state actually has

Three of these five structures cannot be represented by one number in a cell.

This is the part that does not survive being flattened into a cell. 14 of the 18 do have a single statutory figure. The rest do not, and the difference is not a rounding detail – it decides whether the number you were given can be right.

Four states where the number in the obvious section is not the number you pay

California. Government Code section 70670(b) sets the uniform first-paper fee for dissolution at $355. Two other sections each add a $40 supplement to any first paper set at $355 by that section, in identical words: “A supplemental fee of forty dollars ($40) shall be collected for filing any first paper subject to the uniform fee that is set at three hundred fifty-five dollars ($355) under Sections 70611, 70612, 70650, 70651, 70652, 70653, 70655, 70658, and 70670.” two supplements, so the operative fee is $435, not $355.

North Carolina. The figure that circulates is $75, and the statute does say “In every action for absolute divorce filed in the district court, a cost of seventy-five dollars ($75.00) shall be assessed against the person filing the divorce action.” But read the next clause: that money is remitted to the Domestic Violence Center Fund. It is a surcharge on top of the district court’s General Court of Justice fee and the facilities and technology items in the same section, not the filing fee.

Colorado. The petitioner pays $230 and the respondent pays $116. Both figures are in the same statute, in consecutive paragraphs. A one-number-per-state table shows you $230 and hides $116, which is $346 of court fees for the two of you.

Nevada. The fee is assembled from at least three sections, each of which describes itself as an addition to any other fees provided by law. What we can publish is a floor, and we have marked it as one.

Two states that charge you more for divorcing than for suing

Minnesota’s first-paper fee is $310 for a civil action and $340 for a dissolution: “shall pay, when the first paper is filed for that party in said action, a fee of $310, except in marriage dissolution actions the fee is $340.” Montana’s is $90 for an ordinary proceeding and $170 for a dissolution, in a single sentence that also prices a legal separation at $150. In both statutes the extra money is directed by name – Montana’s to a children’s trust fund and to a fund for legal help for indigent victims of domestic violence.

That is worth knowing for a reason beyond trivia. It means the divorce fee in those states is a deliberate figure, not an accident of the general civil schedule, and it will move on its own.

The statutory sentence for every state we read

Reproduced from the bytes we downloaded. Iowa’s and Oklahoma’s read oddly because those sources are PDFs and the extracted text carries the page layout – a dropped capital, a hyphenation break, a run of dot leaders – with it. We have not tidied them, because tidying a quote is how a quote stops being one.

The 33 we did not read, and why

33 jurisdictions with no figure. A guessed number would look identical to a verified one on the page and would be worth less than this list.

Two of these are worth naming. Texas returned a 1,700-character shell on both the HTML and the PDF of its own statute site – the same failure we recorded in July and again in August. New York’s legislature site and its court system’s filing-fee pages both refused every request we made. In neither case do we know the number, so in neither case is there a number here.

What this page does not settle

This page publishes statutory filing fees for 18 jurisdictions and nothing else. It is not a cost-of-divorce estimate, and the filing fee is the smallest line in most divorces.

Thirty-three of the 51 jurisdictions are not published. Each one names the URL that was tried and why it failed, and none carries a guessed number.

Every figure here is the STATUTORY fee. County surcharges, service of process, sheriff fees, parenting-class fees and e-filing vendor charges are outside every statute quoted, and none of them is estimated on this page.

Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada and Virginia are marked partial: the statute we read supplies one component of the fee and cross-references others we did not read, so no total is published for those four.

Sources

• 705 ILCS 105/27.1b — https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=070501050K27.1b
• Cal. Gov. Code § 70670(b) — https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&sectionNum=70670
• Colo. Rev. Stat. § 13-32-105(1)(a), (1)(b) — https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/images/olls/crs2024-title-13.pdf
• Fla. Stat. § 28.241(1)(a)1.b. — https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2024/28.241
• Iowa Code § 602.8105(1)(b) — https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/602.8105.pdf
• Kan. Stat. Ann. § 60-2001(a) — https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch60/060_020_0001.html
• Mich. Comp. Laws § 600.2529(1)(a) — https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=mcl-600-2529
• Minn. Stat. § 357.021(2)(1) — https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/357.021
• Mont. Code Ann. § 25-1-201(1)(a) — https://archive.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0250/chapter_0010/part_0020/section_0010/0250-0010-0020-0010.html
• N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-305(a)(2), (a2) — https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_7A/GS_7A-305.html
• N.D. Cent. Code § 27-05.2-03(1)(b) — https://ndlegis.gov/cencode/t27c05-2.pdf
• Neb. Rev. Stat. § 33-106(1) — https://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=33-106
• Nev. Rev. Stat. §§ 19.013(1), 19.020(1), 19.030(1) — https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-019.html
• Okla. Stat. tit. 28, § 152(A)(1) — https://law.justia.com/codes/oklahoma/title-28/section-28-152/
• Va. Code Ann. § 17.1-275(A)(26) — https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title17.1/chapter2/section17.1-275/
• W. Va. Code § 59-1-11(a)(3) — https://code.wvlegislature.gov/59-1-11/
• Wash. Rev. Code § 36.18.020(2)(a) — https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=36.18.020
• Wis. Stat. § 814.61(1)(a), (1)(b) — https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/814/ii/61

Related: DIY, Online or Attorney · Gray Divorce Cost Estimator · the same treatment for probate court fees · the three things that decide the money.

General information drawn from the primary statutes, regulations and published federal plan documents named above, not legal, tax or financial advice. Court fees change, and the figures here are what each statute said on the date above; check the section before relying on it.