Filing for divorce generally includes (1) filing the necessary paperwork with the appropriate state or county court; (2) paying the filing fee; and (3) having the paperwork properly served on (handed to) your spouse—known as service of process.

This paperwork generally consists of a complaint or petition that includes the names of the spouses, the grounds for the divorce (fault or no-fault), whether there are children involved in the marriage, and whether the spouse is seeking child custody, child support, or spousal support.

A spouse generally may file for divorce in the state and county in which the spouse resides—or in which the other spouse resides. In many states the spouse must have lived in the state or county for a specified period of time before filing for divorce. Laws regarding this residency requirement and where a lawsuit for divorce may be filed vary from state to state and with circumstances in which the spouses share minor children.

Laws regarding the requirements for filing for divorce are usually located in a state’s statutes—often in the family code or domestic relations code.

In Washington State, filing for divorce, legally known as dissolution of marriage, involves submitting the necessary paperwork to the appropriate county court where either spouse resides. The initial document is typically called a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, and it outlines the basic information about the marriage, including the names of the spouses, the grounds for divorce (Washington is a no-fault divorce state, meaning that the only ground for divorce is an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage), details about children from the marriage, and any requests for child custody, child support, or spousal maintenance (alimony). The filing spouse must pay a filing fee, and the other spouse must be properly served with the divorce papers, a process known as service of process. In Washington, there is a residency requirement that at least one spouse must be a resident of the state, but there is no specified duration of residency required before filing for divorce. The laws governing divorce in Washington can be found in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW), particularly in Title 26, which covers domestic relations.