The Divorce Procedure
To complete any New Jersey divorce requires four procedural steps to be done one at a time:
Step A: Documents you sign that get filed with court;
Step B: Documents from you to your spouse to notify him/her officially that you have started the process (service of process);
Step C: Documents from you to the court to prove that you have notified (served) your spouse and to request a final hearing date;
Step D: A brief court appearance (your spouse in most cases will not have to appear), when a judge will sign final documents.
Step A: Filing Documents
We begin by obtaining from you some basic facts such as names, addresses, phone number, and date of marriage. From this information, we assemble your first-step court documents and return them to you for your signature. You may elect to receive documents as PDF e-mail attachments or by U.S. mail.
You then sign the documents and return them to us together with your payments to cover our fee and the court filing fee.
We will file your signed documents with the Family Part office in your county courthouse. Within about a week, the court will mail to you a copy of the filed documents with a docket number added.
This step ends when you tell us your docket number.
We then use this information to complete and send you the documents you need for the next step.
Step B: Spousal Notification
The previous step ended when you told us your docket number.
The court now expects you to:
- Notify your spouse (by means of a court summons) that you've filed for divorce.
- Prove that you've accomplished this notification.
You cannot proceed further until you file with the court proof of service on your spouse, either personal or advertised. Regardless of the method of service, the responsibility for locating your spouse is yours, not the court's or anyone else's.
If you cannot locate your spouse, you may petition the court to accept, as proof of service, a legal notice newspaper advertisement of the summons. You may use this publication method of process service only after you have completed an extensive documented search for your spouse.
If you know or can find out where your spouse lives or works, the proof document may be either:
- An Acknowledgment of Service that your spouse signs (before a notary) attesting to his/her receipt of a copy of one of the documents you filed with the court.
- An Affidavit from a process server that he/she lawfully served your spouse.
If you tell us, when you call in your docket number, that you expect your spouse to voluntarily sign an Acknowledgment of Service, we will forward to you:
- A court notice of your filing (summons) addressed to your spouse.
- A prepared Acknowledgment for your spouse to sign.
You then forward to your spouse the summons, the Acknowledgment, and a copy of one of the documents you received from the court. You then wait for a reasonable time for your spouse to return the signed Acknowledgment back to you.
A process server becomes necessary only if your spouse won't sign the Acknowledgment. A process server may be any competent neutral person over age 18 not involved in the case; normally, the process server is a civilian working for or with the sheriff's office. Normally, if your spouse is to be served in New Jersey, we prepare and send to you the documents you need for the sheriff; if out-of-state, we have a special service to locate and make arrangements with the serving authority for you.
Caution: If a domestic violence proceeding has resulted in an existing court order preventing mutual contact, you should either have a third party communicate with your spouse to obtain a voluntary signature or use sheriff service at the outset.
To complete this step, the court should give you six months time from the date of filing of your first documents and 60 days notice in advance of the end of the six-month period [R. 1:13-7]. If you don't comply and a judge enters what it calls an "Administrative Dismissal", you'll need to submit some special paperwork and pay the court a $30 fee to have your divorce put back on the calendar. You shouldn't let this happen, but if it does, we have a special service that can handle the details.
This step ends when one of these events occurs:
- You receive from your spouse signed an Acknowledgment of Service and tell us the date of signature.
- You receive from the sheriff a Proof of Service affidavit and tell us the date your spouse was served.
- We receive a Proof of Service affidavit from an out-of-state process server.
- We receive an Affidavit of Publication from a newspaper.
We then use this information to complete and send you the documents you need for the next step.
Step C: Request Hearing
The previous step ended when we receive information about your spouse's receipt of notification (actual or by publication).
We now will forward to you more documents to sign and file with the court together with the proof of service you obtained in the previous step. The court, as soon as it receives this paperwork, will be able to schedule a date and time for you to appear before a judge to complete the process.
This step ends when you tell us the date of your court appearance and the name of the judge assigned to you.
We then use this information to complete and send you the documents you need for the last step.
Step D: Court Appearance
The previous step ended when you told us the date of your court appearance and the name of the judge assigned to you.
We now will forward to you the Judgment of Divorce document you want the judge to sign. If you need or want a Marital Settlement Agreement, you both will need to sign this contract in advance of the court date.
You have scheduled your court appearance for the limited purpose of having a judge end your marriage while you are under oath. In most cases, the judge will not require or accept testimony as to specifics such as child support or division of property or debts. Usually, you appear without your spouse, unless you are the husband and your wife wants her former name restored.
The judge will swear you in, take you through a few simple questions, and, if you have appeared without your spouse, provide you with two copies of a Judgment of Divorce. You will be expected to give or mail the second copy to your now ex-spouse. If you have both appeared, each of you will receive your own copy. Each copy will include the judge's signature and a state seal.